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Cycle of Failure

HOW MICHIGAN KEEPS “THROWING THE FIGHT” FOR CHILDREN –


AND HOW TO MAKE THE STATE A CONTENDER AGAIN

National Coalition for


Child Protection Reform
53 Skyhill Road (Suite 202)
Alexandria VA 22314
(703) 212-2006
info@nccpr.org
www.nccpr.org
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Cycle of Failure
HOW MICHIGAN KEEPS “THROWING THE FIGHT” FOR CHILDREN –
AND HOW TO MAKE THE STATE A CONTENDER AGAIN
By Richard Wexler, NCCPR Executive Director
February 18, 2009

CONTENTS:

OVERVIEW 5
Michigan’s war against grandparents 8
An X-ray of DHS’ soul 13
WRONGFUL REMOVAL DRIVES EVERYTHING ELSE 17
The coming TANF train wreck 19
Beyond lemonade: case histories 22
You’re only damned if you don’t 23
The data behind the cases 27
Comparison shopping in Grand Rapids 28
Who is harmed? 34
Michigan ignores the “evidence base” 36
How taking fewer children can make children safer 37
Addicted to per-diems 39
When the issue is drugs 40
MICHIGAN’S CHILD WELFARE HISTORY 41
The Binsfeld betrayal 43
Reality check: How the system really works 45
Michigan’s “express lane” to indefinite foster care 52
Adoption-at-all-costs 54
1995 / 2005 55
HANGOVER FROM THE BINSFELD BINGE 58
The Udow era 58
The campaign against Family to Family 59
The Michigan child welfare brain drain 60
Squandering $100 million a year the Michigan way 64
And now, the war against grandparents 65
RECOMMENDATIONS 66
Help for families 66
Due process 69
Leveling the playing field in Washington State 70
Additional recommendations 74
Endnotes 76
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This report is dedicated to the memory of the children of Michigan who were taken
from their parents in the name of “child safety” only to die in the duly-licensed
homes or institutions of strangers, including:

Timothy Boss
Joshua Causey
Johnny Dragomir
Ricky Holland
Isaac Lethbridge
Allison Newman

ABOUT NCCPR
The National Coalition for Child Protection Reform is a non-profit organization whose members have encountered the
child protection system in their professional capacities and work to make it better serve America’s most vulnerable children. Board
of Directors: President: Martin Guggenheim, former Director of Clinical and Advocacy Programs, New York University School of
Law. Vice President: Carolyn Kubitschek, attorney specializing in child welfare law, former Co-coordinator of Family Law, Legal
Services for New York City. Directors: Elizabeth Vorenberg, (Founding President) former Assistant Commissioner of Public Wel-
fare, State of Massachusetts; former Deputy Director, Massachusetts Advocacy Center; former member, National Board of Direc-
tors, American Civil Liberties Union; Annette Ruth Appell, Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs, Washington University Law School, St.
Louis, former Associate Dean for Clinical Programs, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Marty Beyer,
Ph.D., clinical psychologist and consultant to numerous child welfare reform efforts; Ira Burnim, Legal Director, Judge Bazelon Cen-
ter for Mental Health Law, Washington, DC; former Legal Director, Children’s Defense Fund; former Staff Attorney, Southern Pover-
ty Law Center; Prof. Paul Chill, Associate Dean, University of Connecticut School of Law; Prof. Dorothy Roberts, Northwestern Uni-
versity School of Law, author Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (Basic Civitas Books: 2002); Witold “Vic” Walczak, Le-
gal Director, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Pennsylvania; Ruth White, Executive direc-
tor, National Center for Housing and Child Welfare, former Director of Housing and Homelessness, Child Welfare League of Ameri-
ca. Staff: Richard Wexler, Executive Director. Author, Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims of the War Against Child Abuse.
(Prometheus Books: 1990, 1995).

Funding for this publication, and NCCPR’s other advocacy activities in Michigan is
provided by The Skillman Foundation.

Created in 1960, The Skillman Foundation is a private philanthropy whose chief aim is
to help develop good schools and good neighborhoods for children. Though grants are
made throughout Metropolitan Detroit, most grants are directed at six Detroit neighborhoods
– Southwest Detroit (Vernor and Chadsey/Condon), Brightmoor, Osborn, Central and Co-
dy/Rouge – and toward innovative and successful schools throughout the city of Detroit.
With assets of nearly $600 million, the Foundation gives away approximately $27 million a
year.

Other NCCPR activities are funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies, the Open Society
Institute and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

We thank the Foundations for their support, but acknowledge that the views ex-
pressed in this publication are those of NCCPR alone and do not necessarily reflect the opi-
nions of our funders.
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Cycle of Failure
HOW MICHIGAN KEEPS “THROWING THE FIGHT” FOR CHILDREN –
AND HOW TO MAKE THE STATE A CONTENDER AGAIN

Overview
At a gathering of grassroots family advocacy organizations last September, Susan Kelly,
senior director for strategic consulting and systems improvement for Casey Family Programs,
and a leader of child welfare reform efforts in Michigan for decades, recalled a different kind of
meeting a few weeks earlier.
Kelly was meeting with 14 boys at the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Center. The
boys all had to wear prison uniforms, though for most, their “crime” had been running away
from a foster care placement.
In Michigan, the bureaucratic term for these children is “dual jacket.” Each had a child
welfare case – they’d all been taken from their parents – and, now that they’d run from wherever
the state put them, they had a juvenile justice case as well.
“When we went around the group and asked, ‘who is there for you right now?’ You know
what the answers were? ‘My father, my mother, my granny, my auntie,’” Kelly said. But these
children didn’t know that the State of Michigan had made it much harder for their mothers, fa-
thers, grandparents and other relatives to be there for them. All of these children had had their
rights to their families terminated – but no one had bothered to tell them.
“We left that room thinking, ‘What have we done to these children?’” Kelly said.

What Michigan had done to these danger.


children was betray them. Some were be-
trayed by being taken from those mothers,
fathers, grandparents and other relatives
when it wasn’t necessary. All had been be- Michigan’s tragic history
trayed by being severed from them forever, is one in which innovators
without their knowledge, and without the reach out to bring to the state
state offering them anything in return.
They and thousands like them were the best ideas from around
betrayed by decades of child welfare failure the nation, only to have each
in Michigan. They were betrayed by politi- one sabotaged and
cal expedience. They were betrayed by a
powerful network of private providers – a marginalized by a child
“foster care-industrial complex” - that ratio- welfare establishment
nalizes harm as help and hate as love. And desperate to preserve its
they were betrayed by a take-the-child-and-
run mentality that not only harms the child- perks, its prerogatives and,
ren it is supposedly intended to help but also most of all, its per diems.
overloads the system, starving it of re-
sources, choking off innovation, and actual-
ly making it harder to find children in real
CYCLE OF FAILURE/6

In some respects Michigan is sadly so just as soon as you changed the laws to
typical. Many states have child welfare sys- stop giving those supposedly rotten parents
tems that never rise above mediocrity, some “too many chances” - but that army never
never even reach it. But Michigan is a state shows up? Do you do what’s hard and re-
with many good people who keep trying to build the system to emphasize what really
make that system better, only to be beaten works: safe, proven programs to keep fami-
down by that foster care-industrial complex. lies together? Or do what’s easy: tinker with
the laws a little and say, “There. Now
we’ve fixed it.”
Human nature tends to lead us to the
“Sadly, there is a certain easy way out. And that’s another betrayal of
element within the child children.
welfare industry that tends to And, of course, not everyone means
well. As Prof. Ronald Davidson, Director of
look upon kids in the way that, the Mental Health Policy Program at the
say, Colonel Sanders looks University of Illinois at Chicago Department
upon chickens…” of Psychiatry, and a key figure in reforming
--Prof. Ronald Davidson, Director, the child welfare system in Illinois, has writ-
Mental Health Policy Program, ten: “Sadly, there is a certain element within
University of Illinois at Chicago the child welfare industry that tends to look
upon kids in the way that, say, Colonel Sand-
ers looks upon chickens…”1

Many of the people standing in the ________


way of reform actually mean well. Rationa-
lization is powerful. If you’ve built an em- It may be hard to believe now, but
pire on collecting endless per diem pay- there was a time, in the first half of the
ments for tearing children away from every- 1990s, when you could ask almost any child
one they know and love, and warehousing welfare leader which states were on the cut-
them far from their homes in bucolic “treat- ting edge of doing right by vulnerable child-
ment centers,” what do you do when a ren, which states were closest to getting
mountain of research says it doesn’t work? child welfare right, and, over and over,
Do you do what’s hard and face up to it, you’d get the same answer: Alabama – and
scrap the program and start over? Or do Michigan.
what’s easy: ignore the research, live “in Today, Alabama really is a national
denial” and point to the cottages and pretty leader. Nobody looks to Michigan anymore.
grounds and good intentions in the hope that Instead, people point to Illinois.
will divert everyone’s attention – including Twelve years ago, that state had more than
your own – from the failure of the actual 50,000 children in foster care on any given
program. day.2 Today, the number is under 16,000.3
What do you do when you’re a law- Independent court-appointed monitors say
maker and you’ve been suckered into believ- that, as foster care plummeted, child safety
ing every parent who loses a child to the improved.
system is brutally abusive or hopelessly ad- Ask leaders in Illinois how they did
dicted? What do you do if you were told a it and they’ll cite importing some of the
veritable army of childless yuppies was ideas that made Alabama work, and coming
waiting to adopt the children and would do up with innovations of their own. But the
former head of the Illinois child welfare
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agency says something else: They took some ●Michigan’s Intensive Family Pre-
of the very ideas Michigan cast aside.4 servation Services program, Families First,
Michigan’s tragic history is one in nationally recognized as among the nation’s
which innovators reach out to bring to the best, with an outstanding track record for
state the best ideas from around the nation, keeping children safely in their own homes,
only to have each one sabotaged and margi- has been marginalized within the state De-
nalized by a child welfare establishment partment of Human Services,* its budget re-
desperate to preserve its perks, its preroga- peatedly cut.
tives and, most of all, its per diems.
As a result:
● Although the rate at which child- We all know the horror
ren are taken from their parents has very
slowly declined in recent years, probably
stories about children left in
due largely to reforms in Wayne County, dangerous homes in cases
Michigan still takes away children at a rate that turn out to have more
far above the rate in systems widely re-
garded as, relatively speaking, models.
“red flags” than a Soviet May
Thousands of children are needlessly trau- Day parade. That problem is
matized by being taken from everyone they not the opposite of the prob-
know and love; some are abused in foster
care, where the rate of abuse is far higher
lem of wrongful removal – it is
than generally recognized. directly related to the problem
● It’s not just children needlessly of wrongful removal.
taken from their parents who are harmed.
We all know the horror stories about
children left in dangerous homes in cases ●Michigan has virtually abandoned
that turn out to have more “red flags” than a almost all serious efforts at prevention and
Soviet May Day parade. That problem is family preservation – funding what little is
not the opposite of the problem of wrongful done almost exclusively with relatively
removal – it is directly related to the prob- small amounts of federal money left over af-
lem of wrongful removal. ter slashing the welfare rolls. And, of
All the time, money and effort course, with welfare growing again, that
wasted investigating false allegations and funding now is in danger as well.
trivial reports that should have been ● In some cases, big, powerful pri-
screened out by county child abuse hotlines, vate agencies are being paid by Michigan
and all the time, money and effort squan- taxpayers to provide help to troubled fami-
dered on needless foster care, overwhelm lies, and then simply refusing to do it be-
the system, making it harder for workers to cause they don’t want to venture from their
find children in real danger. So all children
wind up less safe.
*
The problem of high caseloads is se- During the time period discussed in this
rious and real. But it’s due more to a surfeit report, the agency responsible for child welfare in
Michigan has been called the Department of Social
of cases than a shortage of caseworkers. Services, the Family Independence Agency and the
●Michigan places nearly twice as Department of Human Services. For the sake of sim-
many children as Illinois in the worst, and plicity, this report always will use the most recent
most expensive, form of “care” – group name.
homes and institutions.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/8

NO LICENSE, NO GRANDCHILD
Michigan’s war against grandparents
President Obama speaks often of how important his grandmother was in his life. The
President was raised for eight years by Madelyn Payne Dunham who, sadly, died just before
the election. Today, we would call it “informal kinship care” or “private kinship care.”5
Children who have the potential to become the next Barack Obama, but happen to live
in Michigan, may not be so fortunate. That’s because the group whose hubris leads it to call
itself “Children’s Rights” (CR) is waging a war against grandparents like Madelyn Payne
Dunham, and the Michigan Department of Human Services has surrendered.
As a result, in a pattern seen over and over in the state, Michigan is backing away
from a reform it once embraced. Michigan once was a leader in kinship care, which is not on-
ly more humane and better for children’s well-being than what should properly be called
“stranger care” – it’s also safer than stranger care. In 2006, Michigan placed 35 percent of
foster children with relatives;6 the national average is only about 24 percent.7

People who love you are far less likely to give up on you than total
strangers. So grandparents and other relatives are more likely to put up
with behavior that might prompt strangers to either reach for the
psychiatric medication or throw the child out.
But that was before DHS signed a consent decree to settle a lawsuit brought by CR.
The decree is a mixed bag, with more good provisions than bad. It’s far more reasonable than
what CR originally sought, something that will be discussed in detail in our next report. But
the bad provisions include one exceptionally odious clause that threatens vulnerable grand-
children.
Of course, in Mr. Obama’s case, no agency like DHS was involved – again, fortunate
for the future President. And, in fact, millions of grandchildren are raised in such informal ar-
rangements by dedicated, often heroic grandparents without a government agency butting in
with a laundry list of meaningless requirements.
But in cases where DHS used to be able to turn to a grandparent without restriction,
the consent decree imposes severe new limits. It requires that any relative who steps for-
ward to care for a loved one whose parents are accused of maltreatment meet all the same
hypertechnical licensing requirements imposed on total strangers. With only limited excep-
tions, the new rule is: No license, no grandchild.
Licensing is an obsession at CR, and whenever CR gets obsessed with something, it
plays out in the group’s lawsuits. The obsession is in keeping with the bureaucratic mindset
of the group. One of their early settlements allegedly included a provision for training ma-
nuals with clauses requiring that all classrooms where training take place have waste-
baskets.8 But this time, in particular, CR’s bureaucratic mindset is hurting real, live children.
Of course there are certain bare minimum standards, directly related to health and
safety, that every foster home should meet. And yes, it’s reasonable to do a criminal records
check to determine if, say, grandma once was an ax murderer.
But Michigan’s foster care licensing requirements run to ten single-spaced pages.9
They seem to assume that every foster parent owns her or his own home, with multiple re-
quirements beyond the control of anyone at the mercy of a landlord.
There are 41 separate requirements just for bedrooms and their contents. There’s al-
so a requirement that every dwelling unit on a floor higher than the second have at least two
means of egress. Odds are the 954-square-foot tenth-floor apartment where Madelyn Payne
Dunham raised her grandson wouldn’t qualify.
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Because Michigan caved in to CR’s demand, Michigan grandparents like Dunham who
want to take in a grandchild placed by DHS must either move or obtain a waiver or variance.
That’s likely to be a very difficult process, with workers fearful of making any exceptions lest
they incur CR’s wrath should something go wrong. (Indeed, a recent study found workers re-
luctant to seek waivers, or unaware that this was possible, even before the settlement.)10
Worse, these new requirements are retroactive. Michigan now faces the prospect of a mass
expulsion of children from the homes of loving grandparents.

Like so much else in child welfare, the licensing requirement for


grandparents flunks the “balance of harms” test.

That would, of course, be devastating to the children. But one group might actually
benefit: The state’s big, powerful, private agencies. Because while private agencies super-
vise 48 percent of stranger care cases, they oversee only 16 percent of kinship cases.11
____________
On one level, when you look at all those regulations one at a time, some of them make
sense. Odds are they were added, one by one, in response to one horror story or another.
But, like so much else in child welfare, the licensing requirement for grandparents flunks the
“balance of harms” test.
Study after study has shown the enormous benefits of kinship care.
Kinship care is still foster care, and even grandma is no substitute for leaving children
in their own homes – something that can be done safely far more often than is done now in
Michigan.
But at least if a child is placed with grandma, it cushions the blow. The child still is
with someone he knows and loves. And, odds are the placement is in his own neighborhood,
so he doesn’t have to change schools and lose all his friends.
Kinship care also lessens one of the most damaging problems of foster care, moving
children from foster home to foster home. People who love you are far less likely to give up
on you than total strangers. So grandparents and other relatives are more likely to put up
with behavior that might prompt strangers to either reach for the psychiatric medication or
throw the child out.12
So it’s no wonder that in Michigan, the casereading demanded by CR itself found that
while fully one-third of children first placed with strangers endured two or more moves, that
happened to only one-fifth of the children first placed with a relative13 - in spite of the fact that
relatives get far less help from the state to take care of the children.

Because grandparents bring an extra ingredient to the mix – love –


it should surprise no one that kinship care generally is safer than stranger
care.

And there are more benefits to kinship care. A study by the Children’s Hospital of
Philadelphia found that children placed in foster care with relatives had fewer behavior prob-
lems than children placed in stranger care.14
Most important, several studies have found that kinship care is safer than stranger
care.15
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And now a new study has advanced our knowledge still further. This latest study
found that children in kinship care did far better than children in stranger care on multiple
measures of safety, permanence and well being. And it found no difference in these benefi-
cial outcomes between licensed and unlicensed kinship homes.16
Of course, when it comes to safety, recent Michigan experience speaks for itself.
Joshua Causey did not die in a kinship home. He died in the licensed home of a
stranger. Allison Newman did not die in a kinship home. She died in the licensed home of a
stranger. Isaac Lethbridge did not die in a kinship home. He died in the licensed home of a
stranger. Ricky Holland did not die in a kinship home. He died in the licensed home of a
stranger. Johnny Dragomir did not die in a kinship home. He died in a licensed group home
run by strangers. If either stranger care - or licensing - guaranteed safety, all of these child-
ren would be alive today.
Again, because grandparents bring an extra ingredient to the mix – love – it should
surprise no one that kinship care generally is safer than stranger care. But the hostility to-
ward families that permeates child welfare systems, and the stereotypes that poison public
perceptions, both extend to extended families.

The group that so arrogantly calls itself “Children’s Rights”


doesn’t know much about either children or rights.

Thus, Jackson County has both one of the worst records of racial bias in Michigan
child welfare17 and one of the most hostile attitudes toward extended families, with the coun-
ty DHS director practically gloating about the new licensing requirement. “Blood is not
enough,” she declared. “We have to ensure child safety.”18 (Just the way licensing ensured
it for Joshua, Isaac, Timothy, Ricky and Johnny?)
It’s all summed up in one pernicious little smear: “The apple doesn’t fall far from the
tree.” If mom is abusive, it is claimed, it must be because grandma has failed in some way.
For starters, this assumes that if mom is doing a poor job raising the children it has to
be grandma’s fault. In fact, there are any number of times when a grandparent may raise four
children under circumstances of poverty and need that many of us can’t possibly imagine,
and have three of them become happy, healthy productive adults. The fourth is lost to the
lure of the streets. When that grandmother then comes forward, at a time when finally she
should be able to rest, and offers to take care of that child’s children, she should be treated
as a hero, not a suspect.
And, as one of the nation’s leading experts on kinship care has said: “a tree has more
than one branch.”19
In fact, though it has done nothing to counter the smears, CR’s own primary justifica-
tion for its war against grandparents isn’t safety, it’s money. Under federal regulations, un-
less a foster home is licensed, the state can’t receive federal reimbursement for the case.
And if it is licensed, the state must pay the grandparents as much as it does strangers. So
CR would argue they’re only trying to help.
That is in keeping with the way CR seems to see children: as numbers on a spread-
sheet or files on a shelf. See children as flesh-and-blood human beings and other solutions
come to mind, such as pressing to change the federal regulations and demanding that states
simply reimburse grandparents the same way they reimburse strangers, using state funds to
do it, if necessary. In the meantime, DHS should go back to court if necessary and seek to
reopen this part of the consent decree to protect vulnerable grandchildren.
The group that so arrogantly calls itself “Children’s Rights” doesn’t know much about
either children or rights. Because if you ask almost any child who is old enough, he’ll tell you
himself: If mom and dad can’t take care of me, I have a right to be raised by grandma and
grandpa.
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suburban headquarters into inner-city neigh- the character played by Marlon Brando in
borhoods. the movie On The Waterfront. The washed-
●Michigan accepted an innovative up prizefighter was named Terry Molloy. He
waiver that would have allowed $100 mil- had a shot at glory but was forced to throw
lion per year in federal foster care money to the fight. But even people who never saw
be used for safe, proven alternatives as well the film know his most famous line: “I coul-
– only to back out at the very last minute, da been a contender.”
and slink away from the deal, without ever
telling the public or explaining the turna-
bout. Florida accepted the same deal and, as
a result, has made enormous progress in Over and over Michigan
turning around its once dreadful child wel- has a chance to be a
fare system. contender for excellence in
●Michigan appears poised to back
away from still another successful innova- child welfare. And over and
tion, the Family to Family initiative. Last over, it throws the fight.
year, DHS reduced the level of participation
in the program at two key sites, Wayne and
Macomb counties.
Michigan is the Terry Molloy of
But the consent decree Michigan
child welfare. Over and over it has a chance
signed to settle a class-action lawsuit man-
to be a contender for excellence in child
dates adopting statewide a key Family to
welfare. And over and over, it throws the
Family strategy, Team Decisionmaking.
fight.
● A comprehensive study found that
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
the Michigan system is permeated with ra-
There are many good people work-
cial bias. (See An X-ray of DHS’ soul, p.
ing in the trenches in Michigan child wel-
13.)
fare. When a group of birth parents ad-
●Michigan still hasn’t recovered
dressed the giant “task force” now studying
from the demagogic attacks against family
Michigan child welfare, they spoke of terri-
preservation launched by former Lt. Gov.
ble injustices done to their children. But
Connie Binsfeld and her disciples. That’s
they also made a point of singling out good
scared people at every level into taking
workers who gave them both help and hope
away children needlessly, and encouraged
when they needed it most. Said one parent:
an adoption-at-all-costs mentality that has
“I had a wonderful foster care specialist who
created a generation of legal orphans, with
breathed life into me.”
no ties to birth parents and little hope of
Michigan can turn that kind of case-
adoption.
work from the exception to the rule. And it
●And even though placement with
won’t even take more money to do it, only
relatives is far better for children than what
the will, and the willingness to battle the en-
should properly be called “stranger care,”
trenched interests that have stymied reform
Michigan has caved into demands to wage
so many times before – this time, without
what amounts to a war against the state’s
throwing the fight.
grandparents. (See page 8)
At the end of this report we offer 37
_______
specific recommendations that will help
Michigan become a contender again.
Few people remember the name of
The consequences of Michigan’s re-
CYCLE OF FAILURE/12

peated failures are well known. They are parent was “unsubstantiated” when the fos-
well-summarized in two recent in-depth ana- ter parent explained that the incident in
lyses of the system, commissioned by plain- which she hit the foster child in the stomach
tiffs in the recently-settled class-action suit was an accident – she’d only meant to hit his
against the Michigan Department of Human legs.
Services (MDHS) According to one report, ● DHS data on abuse in foster care
by John Goad: are misleading and report figures so low as
to be laughable. Yet DHS reports data to the
federal government that it knows or should
know are inaccurate.
In another case an ● In a review of several fatality cases
abuse allegation against a in which private agencies were involved,
foster parent was “unsubstan- Goad found casework “ranged from dange-
rously careless to the outer reaches of in-
tiated” when the foster parent competence.” DHS overlooked “bad deci-
explained that the incident in sions, terrible foster homes and abysmal
which she hit the foster child practice.”
● As for private agencies in general
in the stomach was an – which some lawmakers have seen as some
accident – she’d only meant kind of panacea – there is no evidence that
to hit his legs. they are functioning any better than DHS.
Both reports found that they get rare, cur-
sory inspections that don’t focus on the ac-
tual quality of the programs – and they al-
● Children placed in the custody of most always fail to meet even these mini-
DHS “are highly likely to be in danger in the mum standards. Corrective action plans are
very foster care system intended to protect not monitored to see if they actually cor-
them.” rected anything. And, no matter what the
● “Children who are wards of inspectors find, the contracts routinely are
MDHS are certain to be placed in – or left in renewed.
– dangerous foster care settings because ● A second report, by Cathy Crabt-
MDHS has failed to identify abusive and ree, notes that when it comes to reunifying
neglectful substitute care providers.” [Em- families “when it is safe to do so” Michi-
phasis added]. gan’s is “among the slowest systems in the
● The very structure of the agency nation.”
“all but preclude[s] the effective protection ● Both reports cite one example after
of foster children.” another of appalling ignorance on the part of
● Michigan’s definitions of mal- top DHS managers. Goad’s report cites the
treatment are so “vague and subjective” that former chief deputy director in charge of
“individual beliefs and biases of casework- field operations who didn’t know that kin-
ers will inevitably determine how individual ship caregivers get less financial support
cases are classified.” than strangers. And she didn’t know how
In one case, DHS found that a foster many children were placed with relatives
child had not been abused – even after he’d anyway. And she didn’t know what propor-
been murdered in his foster home. In anoth- tion of foster children’s cases are eligible for
er case an abuse allegation against a foster
CYCLE OF FAILURE/13

An X-ray of DHS’ soul


STUNNING FINDINGS FROM THE MICHIGAN RACE EQUITY REVIEW

The most important report issued on Michigan child welfare in recent years – maybe
ever – is not the report you’re reading now.
The most important report on Michigan child welfare, and one of the finest ever issued
on any child welfare system anywhere in the country, is the Michigan Race Equity Review, re-
leased in January by the Center for the Study of Social Policy.20 It’s available online at
http://www.cssp.org/uploadFiles/michigan%20report%201%2014%2009%20FINAL.pdf
It's worth reading every word, particularly the words from page 12 through page 40.
It is to the great credit of former DHS Director Marianne Udow that she commissioned
a no-holds-barred, outside review of her agency – and that’s exactly what she got. The impli-
cations go far beyond even the vital issue of racial bias.

The Michigan Race Equity Review tells us, in vivid, compelling


detail, that every impoverished African American child in Michigan is in
danger of being torn needlessly from everyone loving and familiar by a
child welfare system that is arbitrary, capricious and cruel.

The report reads more like good investigative reporting than a dry recitation of statis-
tics, with actual case histories interwoven throughout. It is less a study than an x-ray of
DHS’ soul – and the picture is ugly. It tells us, in vivid, compelling detail, that every impove-
rished African American child in Michigan is in danger of being torn needlessly from every-
one loving and familiar by a child welfare system that is arbitrary, capricious and cruel. (And
things aren't much better for impoverished white children.)
● How many children have been taken because some agencies that are legally re-
quired, and paid by Michigan taxpayers, to provide in-home services, simply refuse to do
so because they don't want to go into poor neighborhoods? And why does DHS keep letting
them get away with it?
● How many children have been taken when a Team Decisionmaking meeting, an ex-
cellent concept meant to be a way to help a family stay together, was turned into a subterfuge
designed to lure a family to a DHS office so a child could be taken on the spot? This was
something DHS actually tried to do in one of the cases documented in this stunning report.
● But sometimes, it's the little things that reveal the most. The report offers up one
particularly telling detail. It's about how a Black parent and a white parent can say the same
thing about alleged drug abuse, but the statement is characterized differently in case records,
simply by changing one key word. According to the report:
In several case files of African American families, workers described a parent as “DE-
NIES history of substance abuse.” The case file contained no documentation of any past or
current substance abuse problem. In case files of Caucasian families with similar documenta-
tion, workers described a parent as having “NO history of substance abuse.” [Emphasis add-
ed].
In other words, under otherwise identical circumstances, the white parent is taken at
her word, the Black parent is not.
Among other key revelations in the new study:
●Structured Decision Making (SDM), the name for checklists used to determine risk
CYCLE OF FAILURE/14

and decide if a child should be torn from everyone loving and familiar, is permeated with ra-
cial bias. While SDM has a veneer or objectivity, many of the determinations workers are
asked to make are highly subjective.

In one case, a Team Decisionmaking meeting, an excellent concept


meant to be a way to help a family stay together, was turned into a
subterfuge designed to lure a family to a DHS office so a child could be
taken on the spot.

Furthermore, the "risk factors" are self-reinforcing. In other words, a child is rated at
higher risk if there have been previous reports of maltreatment. But, precisely because of po-
verty – and racial bias – poor Black families are more likely to be subjects of such reports.
(In addition, SDM has other serious flaws not mentioned in the Review. Though it
supposedly measures a family's strengths as well as its weaknesses, the scoring method is
such that, if the “strengths” option didn’t exist, the score would be unchanged – in other
words, it’s just window dressing. In addition, the strengths often were not strengths at all, but
simply the absence of a weakness, such as noting that a mother did not have a drug problem.
There was no place to measure real strengths such as creativity and resourcefulness.21)
● If that's not bad enough, the reviewers found that caseworkers often simply got their
facts wrong – and then used this erroneous information to increase the alleged "risk" to the
child.
● In other families, a case deliberately is mislabeled "high risk" because it's the only
way to get "services" to the family. That, however, may mean the family gets the wrong
"help" – counseling instead of, say, a rent subsidy. And then, they may come under suspi-
cion over and over for years, because now they're listed in Michigan's Central Registry of al-
leged child abusers.
●Team Decisionmaking often is misused. The meetings are dominated by "service
providers" the families get little or no say and good alternatives to placement are ignored.
Caseworkers fail to tell families their rights at these meetings, and fail to tell them they are al-
lowed to bring relatives, friends and other informal supports. Parents – and older children –
were talked at instead of talked to, sometimes not even accorded the dignity of being ad-
dressed by name, and when they did speak up, often they were ignored.

Some agencies that are legally required, and paid by Michigan


taxpayers, to provide in-home services, simply refuse to do so because
they don't want to go into poor neighborhoods. And DHS lets them get
away with it.

Even when the meetings function properly they tend to be geared to determining the
type of placement, instead of whether placement itself is necessary.
● Poverty routinely is confused with neglect. Housing problems come up over and
over. For instance: A mother loses her housing because her child has been removed. Then
she can't get the child back because she doesn't have housing.
In one case, a DHS welfare worker encouraged a mother to call the child protective
CYCLE OF FAILURE/15

services division for help in obtaining a stove. She didn't get a stove, she got a child abuse
investigation. She then was told her child would be taken away if she didn't obtain the stove
on her own. Similarly, families that make the mistake of calling DHS for help with heat during
the winter often end up with nothing but a cold house that now has a child abuse investigator
at the door.
● As noted above, big wealthy service providers based in the suburbs sometimes
simply refuse to provide services in the neighborhoods where families live. This sometimes
happens even with providers specifically contracted to provide in-home services – and DHS
has done nothing about it.
● DHS workers fail to seek waivers from requirements unrelated to safety, such as the
number of bedrooms in a home, that prevent children from being placed with relatives even
in unlicensed homes. (This problem is only likely to worsen now that all such homes must be
licensed.)
● Hotline workers screen in far too many cases that are not, in fact, cases of child mal-
treatment. (In addition to the harm this does to the families that are investigated, it's also
overloading caseworkers, reducing the time they have to find children in real danger.) The
hotline review process is biased – there are extra reviews when a call is screened out, but not
when it's screened in.
● Caseworker reports are permeated with misinformation – and then the people doing
psychological evaluations rely on that misinformation. Worse, it appears some evaluators are
simply cutting and pasting boilerplate assessments from one person's psychiatric evaluation
into another’s. In other words, it appears that a "psych eval" that was supposedly done on
Ms. Smith winds up with a paragraph that might say something like "It is clear that Ms. Jones
suffers from…"

Families that make the mistake of calling DHS for help with heat
during the winter often end up with nothing but a cold house that now
has a child abuse investigator at the door.

● Echoing the false claims of Michigan's "foster care-industrial complex" workers,


judges and lawyer guardians ad litem for children repeatedly claimed it was better for child-
ren to be torn from everyone they know and love because then they'd get to live in wealthier
neighborhoods and have better "cultural experiences." (And of course, then those service
providers wouldn't have to go through the trouble of going from their suburban headquarters
into the inner city.) The Review called this
"Reminiscent of the 19th century child rescue ideology that led to the separation of tribal and
immigrant children from their families and communities … The belief that African American
children are better off away from their families and communities was seen in explicit state-
ments by key policy makers and service providers."
But it should be no surprise that this kind of thinking permeates the frontlines of
Michigan child welfare. The leader of a trade association for some of the state's powerful pri-
vate agencies said the same thing at a legislative hearing three years ago. The hearing, and
why this kind of thinking is a huge problem for children, are discussed on page 59.
● Parents constantly are stigmatized and stereotyped; files are filled with insults, none
of them justified by facts of the case. Parents – and children - are characterized negatively for
conduct that is entirely understandable – such as a becoming angry when a child is taken
from them, or a child picking a fight with a classmate moments after being told that his rights
to his parents have been terminated forever, and he can't see them anymore.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/16

● The requirement to make "reasonable efforts" to keep families together when it is


safe to do so is routinely ignored. Parents' lawyers don't even raise the issue – and one judi-
cial officer said that's because raising reasonable efforts is "a losing argument." Worse, in a
bit of irony worthy of Kafka, judges now are deeming the mere existence of a Team Deci-
sionmaking meeting sufficient to meet the "reasonable efforts" requirement. All this is espe-
cially disturbing in light of the fact that the whole phony rationale for Michigan's so-called
Binsfeld laws, and the enormous harm they've done, was that DHS supposedly was fanatical
about "reasonable efforts." As is discussed throughout this report, it wasn't true then, and it
isn't true now.
● Many in DHS have no clue about what really is required in law and regulation. The
problem is so pervasive that the report authors coined a term for it: "Policy mythology." For
example, there is a widespread belief that if a parent has lost one child to termination of pa-
rental rights – even if, say, a mother voluntarily gave up a child for adoption decades before -
all future children must be confiscated at birth and termination of parental rights petitions
filed. It's not true – but workers routinely act on this myth. (The reality, that the law encourag-
es this pernicious practice, is bad enough.)
● The investigators found that DHS workers at every level were deep in denial about
all of this. Some simply refused to believe the data with which they were confronted. Others
responded with Stephen Colbert-like platitudes about how they, personally are "color blind"
and "everyone is the same to me."
Of course, when Colbert says it, it's satire.

federal reimbursement. And she didn’t evidence that will be discussed in this report,
know how many cases her workers carried. make clear that many of the children torn
And she did not draw up or even review the
list of annual priorities of her own division.
One could call the way DHS is run a
case of the blind leading the blind – but that One could call the way
implies that someone actually is trying to DHS is run a case of the blind
lead. leading the blind – but that
Both experts were hired by the plain-
tiffs to help them make their case – and, in implies that someone actually
fact, there are places where the reports ap- is trying to lead.
pear geared to supporting specific changes
sought by the plaintiffs. But a third report, a
casereading agreed to by both sides, is just
from their families in Michigan did not have
as damning. Goad and Crabtree may have
abusive and neglectful parents at all. They
been hired guns, but DHS gave them plenty
had good, loving, but often poor parents,
of ammunition.
who happened to get caught in the DHS net.
In one respect, however, Goad’s re-
These children are far less safe in
port contains a serious error. In the very last
foster care than they were with their parents.
sentence, Goad concludes that “it is clear
Indeed, some of them never survived the
that children are far too likely to be no safer
best efforts of the state of Michigan to pro-
in foster care than they were with their ab-
tect them. Some were adopted to death, fos-
usive and neglectful parents.”22
tered to death – and protected to death.23
But the very failings Goad and
Crabtree describe, and a mountain of other
CYCLE OF FAILURE/17

Wrongful removal drives everything else


Everyone knows the Michigan child more than $223.3 million on “foster care
welfare system is a mess, but almost every- payments.”28 This does not include the cost
one ignores the fundamental cause. of the state’s foster care bureaucracy, a fig-
That fundamental cause is not lack of ure DHS was unable to provide. The state
money. also was unable to break down how much
While it is very difficult to compare went to stashing children in group homes
the amount that states spend on child wel- and institutions.
fare, and the available data are fairly old, it
is possible to come up with a rough estimate.
Michigan spends on child welfare at a rate
that is above the national average, well Michigan might as well
above the rate in Alabama’s system, which take that $100 million – or
is, relatively speaking, a model, and proba- possibly much more - it
bly at least equal to the rate in Illinois,
another model.24 spends on congregate care
The reason Michigan isn’t getting and burn it on steps of the
more bang for its child welfare buck is be- State Capitol on a cold
cause of the great paradox of child welfare:
The more an option costs the worse it is for winter’s day. At least then,
children. Safe, proven alternatives to ever some passers-by in Lansing
taking a child away in the first place cost could keep warm.
less than family foster homes, which cost
less than group homes which cost less than
the worst form of “care” of all – institutions.
Michigan throws its money away by But if Michigan is like the nation as a
taking away far too many children needless- whole, odds are more than $100 million,
ly – proportionately far more than either Illi- perhaps more than $200 million per year,
nois or Alabama, for example. And then it was spent on institutionalization – almost all
throws far too many of those children into of it wasted.29
institutions. If the children were benefitting, it
Nationwide, 10.2 percent of children would be worth every penny and more. But
are in institutional care. In Illinois it’s 8.2 they’re not. Overwhelming evidence, to be
percent. But in Michigan it’s 14.5 percent.25 discussed in detail in our next report, shows
In her report, Cathy Crabtree found that institutionalization does children no
that children in Michigan “too often linger in good, and often does them harm. Because of
institutional settings because [better alterna- that evidence, in New Jersey, the reform
tives] are not available.”26 plan developed as a result of a consent de-
The cost of warehousing children in cree negotiated by the group that calls itself
institutions is staggering. “Children’s Rights” (hereafter, simply
Nationwide, although only about 17 “CR”) bans the placement of young children
percent of children are in congregate care in group homes or institutions – and the state
(institutions plus group homes), paying for has been remarkably successful. Today, of
that care eats up 45 percent of all foster care all foster children under age 10, only three
spending.27 In FY 2008, Michigan spent percent are in any form of congregate care.30
Sadly, there is nothing similar in CR’s con-
CYCLE OF FAILURE/18

sent decree in Michigan. In other words, almost all of Michi-


For all the good it does for children, gan’s prevention and family preservation
Michigan might as well take that $100 mil- money comes from the draconian restric-
lion – or possibly much more - it spends on tions on public assistance for poor families
congregate care and burn it on steps of the first initiated at the federal level in 1996
State Capitol on a cold winter’s day. At when TANF replaced “welfare as we know
least then, some passers-by in Lansing could it.” So Michigan’s prevention and family
keep warm. preservation money was, in effect, stolen
Still more money is being wasted from other uses that could have helped the
traumatizing families with needless child same families. Michigan turned surplus
abuse investigations. (See Reality check, p. TANF money into a child welfare slush
45.) fund.
And it gets worse. In some cases,
Michigan may well have effectively taken
Michigan’s prevention money that should have been used to help
and family preservation poor families keep their children, and trans-
ferred it to middle class and wealthy adop-
money was, in effect, stolen tive families who had those children handed
from other uses that could over to them by the state. And the settle-
have helped the same fami- ment with CR actually may make this worse.
(See The coming TANF train wreck, next
lies. Michigan turned surplus page).
TANF money into a The problem of misspending money
in Michigan was compounded by one partic-
child welfare slush fund. ularly craven act. Less than three years ago,
Michigan was given an opportunity, almost
In contrast to the huge amount la- unique in the nation, to use about $100 mil-
vished on substitute care, the total amount lion in federal funds, normally reserved ex-
spent on prevention and family preservation clusively for foster care, for better alterna-
programs for the entire state of Michigan in tives as well. But at the very last minute, af-
FY 2008 was only $70 million. That in- ter publicly announcing it had accepted the
cludes programs that define “prevention” deal, the state walked away, without so
very broadly.31 much as a public explanation. Had the state
But even this figure vastly overstates accepted the deal it would have gone a long
Michigan’s commitment to doing what real- way toward cushioning the blow dealt by the
ly works in child welfare. current economic crisis.
Because about four years ago, Mich- An extremely rough, back-of-the-
igan effectively abandoned state spending on envelope estimate is that Michigan spends
prevention and family preservation. Since at anywhere from $300 million to $444 million
least 2005, and probably earlier, virtually per year on foster care in all its forms.
every dime the state of Michigan spends to (DHS was unable to come up with an esti-
help families stay together comes from the mate of its own.)
federal government. And almost all of that Were Michigan simply to take away
federal money comes from surplus funds in children at the same rate as Illinois, those
the Temporary Assistance for Needy Fami- costs could be cut at least in half. That
lies program (TANF). This is money in- means the state and counties, which pay a
sizable share of substitute care costs in
tended to be used to help impoverished
Michigan, could save anywhere from $100
families become self-sufficient.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/19

The coming TANF train wreck


HARD TIMES FOR MICHIGAN’S CHILD WELFARE SLUSH FUND
Imagine this scenario: Jenny is a mother in Flint, who loves her pre-school daughter;
she dotes on her and does everything she can to nurture her. But under both Michigan and
federal welfare “reform” law, Jenny must get some kind of make-work job. She finds such a
job, far from home in a suburban shopping mall. But who will care for the child? There’s no
help for child care; so she leaves her child with a family friend. She’s not so sure about the
guy but it’s that or leave the child home alone – or stay home with the child and get fired and
cut off from all public assistance.
Someone calls DHS. DHS isn’t so sure about the guy either. But instead of offering
child care, they take the child away, and place her in a wealthy home in the suburbs. The
wealthy parents became foster parents in the first place because they are desperate to adopt
– and under Michigan’s “concurrent planning” program, DHS is supposed to plan for that
from day one – even as they supposedly also try to help the mother get her daughter back.
The caseworker falls in love with the adoptive parents – whose home reminds her so
much of the one where she grew up. Jenny gets no help with child care, her parental rights
are terminated and the wealthy foster parents adopt the child.
Then, those wealthy foster, now adoptive, parents get a monthly subsidy to help take
care of the child. The subsidy comes from the very federal program that was supposed to
help Jenny with child care.

It’s not purely hypothetical. From 2000 to 2003, in Genesee County, the foster-care
population doubled – and even the head of the county DHS office at the time said one of the
main reasons was they were removing children from women forced to leave their children
with unsuitable caretakers while they went to jobs they had to take under the state’s welfare-
to-work laws.32

The state abandoned almost all responsibility for helping


vulnerable families keep their children out of foster care.

As for the source of that adoption money: That’s quite a story.


In 1996, Congress replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program with
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The theory was that draconian restrictions on
who could receive assistance would cut people from the welfare rolls. It did.
Then, it was argued, states could use their TANF surplus funds to help families be-
come self-sufficient. They could provide things like job training and child care; things that
would help make up for the stringent time limits imposed on recipients.
To some extent, that happened too. But for technical reasons, related to how they
spent federal money before 1996, many states were able to exploit a loophole in the law and
use TANF surplus money for child welfare.
Some uses of TANF money in child welfare are reasonable. Most notably, TANF “child
only grants” sometimes go to grandparents and other relatives serving as kinship care par-
ents. (The scandal there is that Michigan won’t supplement those payments, so the grandpa-
rents get far less than is paid to total strangers. See Michigan’s war against grandparents, p.
8). But often, TANF money is, in effect, put in a poor person’s pocket only after it’s been tak-
en out of some other poor person’s pocket.
Money for a worthy program like Families First is taken from funds that might other-
wise have gone to job training, so the family might never have needed Families First.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/20

Money for intensive reunification services is taken from funds that could have gone to
day care, so parents like Jenny might never have lost their children to a lack of supervision
charge.
In short, the state abandoned almost all responsibility for helping vulnerable families
keep their children out of foster care. Instead, Michigan turned money that should go to help
families become self-sufficient into a child welfare slush fund.
Michigan spends only $70 million on prevention and family preservation to begin with
(see chart below for details and sources) – compared with anywhere from $300 million to
$444 million – or more – on foster care.33 And 99.6 percent of the prevention money comes
from the federal government.
True, the state does spend $4.8 million on Children’s Trust Fund programs. But that’s
more like a private charity – all of that state money is donated by generous Michiganians will-
ing to pay more than their tax bills actually require. But the TANF scandal actually is even
worse.

Program Total funds Federal Federal State


Source
Teen Parent $ 3,815,800 $ 3,790,300 TANF $ 25,500
Counseling
Families First 16,946,700 16,946,700 TANF 0

Child Safety/ 16,286,700 16,286,700 TANF 0


Permanency
Planning
Child protection/ 5,539,400 5,539,400 TANF 0
Community Ptnrs.
Zero to Three 3,843,800 3,843,800 TANF 0
Family Group De- 2,454,700 2,454,700 TANF 0
cision Making
Family Reunifica- 3,977,100 3,977,100 TANF 0
tion
Family 2,255,300 1,992,000 TANF 263,300
Preservation and
Prevention Svces.
Strong 14,908,100 14,908,100 Title IV-B 0
Families/
Safe Children
TOTAL: $70,027,600 $69,738,800 $288,000

Source: State of Michigan Department of Human Services, Fiscal Year 2007-2008 Report on the Details of Allocations
Within Program Budgeting Line-Items in 2007 Public Act 131, March 26, 2008, available online at
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/dhs/DHS-LegislativeSec214-1-PA131-2007-Allocations_229733_7.pdf.

At least when money diverted from one prevention program – hard services to ameli-
orate poverty – goes to more targeted prevention and family preservation programs, it still is
going largely to the people who need it most.
But Michigan also has found a way to use its TANF child welfare slush fund as a back
door subsidy to the middle class and the wealthy.
More than $41 million in TANF money is diverted each year into adoption subsidies
and adoption support services. Some of that money may go to impoverished relatives
adopting grandchildren. But there is no means test for adoptive families who want this state
help. Indeed, had Madonna chosen to adopt her child from the Michigan foster care system
instead of Africa, she would have been eligible for a subsidy – taken out of money intended
to be used to help poor people become self-sufficient.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/21

In fact, there are good reasons to provide adoption subsidies without a means test.
The issue is where that money should come from. It should shock the conscience that weal-
thy adoptive parents can be given children from poor families, and then get money that
should have gone to keep those poor families together in the first place.

Had Madonna chosen to adopt her child from the Michigan foster
care system instead of Africa, she would have been eligible for a subsidy
– taken out of money intended to be used to help poor people become
self-sufficient.

And it could get worse still. The settlement with CR requires the state to spend anoth-
er $8 million on services based on a “needs assessment” – but that $8 million can go to fos-
ter care and adoption, not just prevention and family preservation.34 And there is nothing in
the settlement to stop DHS from using TANF to meet this obligation as well – so this part of
the settlement actually could backfire, with even more money diverted from helping poor
people become self-sufficient into foster care and adoption instead.
Of course, all this assumes there still will be any TANF surplus money left.
The whole premise of using funds from TANF surpluses is that there will, indeed, be
surpluses. That worked fine when the economy was booming and there were lots of welfare
recipients to throw off the rolls. But what happens now that the economy is collapsing and
welfare rolls are increasing again? Does no TANF surplus mean no funding for prevention
and family preservation in Michigan?
Anybody want to bet that the money for poor people gets cut long before the legisla-
ture cuts the money for those middle class and wealthy adoptive parents?

million to $148 million per year, and possi- plex” of big, private agencies with their
bly more. (That doesn’t include additional blue-chip boards of directors embedded in
savings Michigan could achieve by reducing the business, political, civic, and religious
the proportion of the remaining foster child- elite of every Michigan community. Gover-
ren who are institutionalized.) Because nors, DHS directors and legislators come
Michigan failed to accept the waiver, an ad- and go; but the foster care-industrial com-
ditional $50 to $74 million in savings would plex is always there.
revert to the federal government.35 Like a tapeworm in the system, the
All that money diverted to needless foster care-industrial complex drains Michi-
substitute care drains resources from better gan child welfare of life and energy and
options and drains creativity from the sys- gives back nothing in return. And it is suffi-
tem. ciently brazen to recommend that the legisla-
Why does it keep happening? The ture take actions that may be illegal, in order
late newspaper columnist Jack Newfield had to preserve the status quo.
a name for it all: “the permanent govern- So while more money certainly could
ment.” The permanent government is un- be helpful, the lack of it is not the major ob-
elected and largely unseen – the power bro- stacle to helping Michigan’s vulnerable
kers and vested interests who wield enorm- children. The major obstacle is simply this:
ous influence at every stage of the process. Michigan takes too many children from their
In child welfare, the “permanent homes and places too many of those it takes
government” is that venerable network of in institutions.
providers, that “foster care-industrial com-
CYCLE OF FAILURE/22

Beyond lemonade percent right – or 51 percent right. So we


For example: write off the family. Reporters don’t write
What could be more wholesome, about them, or if they do, it’s one quick sto-
more all-American than a father taking his ry, buried inside the paper. And readers fix-
son to a baseball game and buying him a ate on whatever the parent did wrong, in-
glass of lemonade? But when a father from stead of on the terrible harm that the removal
Ann Arbor did just that, it led to - - itself did to the children. That’s true even
But wait – we all know the lemonade when things go much more horribly wrong
story. That one made the front page. That than they ever did in the lemonade case.
one provoked outrage all over the country –
and rightly so.36
But part of the reason we know about
it is precisely because it is one of the very
Like a tapeworm in the
rare times when the abuses of a child protec- system, the foster care-
tive services agency reached into the lives of industrial complex drains
a white middle-class family – a family that
could fight back, a family that could get
Michigan child welfare of life
some of the best lawyers in the state (their and energy and gives back
colleagues at the University of Michigan) a nothing in return. And it is
family that the typical newspaper reader and
the typical newspaper reporter can identify
sufficiently brazen to
with. recommend that the
A case like the lemonade case is a legislature take actions that
reminder that, every once in awhile, some-
thing like this actually could happen to our
may be illegal, in order to pre-
children. serve the status quo.
We all should be grateful to that Ann
Arbor family for being willing to tell their
story publicly, and remind us of how much Consider:
harm can be done to children by the un- ● No one accused Sabrina Murphey
checked power of DHS. And while the child of abusing her children. No one said she
in that case was in foster care for only a few beat them, or starved them. No one said she
days, that’s plenty of time to cause serious didn’t love them. Her only crime was to
emotional harm. have been beaten herself – by the children’s
But most of the time, it doesn’t hap- father.
pen to children of people like us. Most of She took the children and moved out
the time, it happens to children of people of the house. But she did keep in touch with
like them – overwhelmingly poor, dispropor- the father – for the sake of the children.
tionately minority. So we’re much slower to DHS said that this was reason enough to
empathize and much quicker to judge. We take away the children.
think: Well, they must have done something. In fact, witnessing domestic violence
DHS wouldn’t just intervene for no reason – can be harmful to children. But taking child-
would they? ren from the non-offending parent is far, far
Actually DHS would, and DHS does. worse; even worse than removing a child
In other cases, the parents did do under other circumstances. According to one
something. Instead of being 100 percent leading national expert, taking a child away
right, they’re only 90 percent right, or 75 from a battered mother is, for the child, “tan-
CYCLE OF FAILURE/23

tamount to pouring salt into an open explain, the Wayne County “Friend of the
wound.”37 That’s why a federal court Court” began garnisheeing Murphey’s pay-
banned the practice in New York City.38 check – and sending the proceeds to the fa-
But for the children of Sabrina Mur- ther.
phy, DHS’ policy boiled down to “please That almost drove Murphey into
pass the salt.” homelessness, and into losing her children
Even after Murphey readily agreed to again.
sever all contact with her children’s father, “They need to change the laws,”
DHS wasn’t satisfied, forcing her to jump Murphey says. “They need to change every-
through hoop after hoop, many of them hav- thing. It’s not me or the women that they’re
ing nothing to do with her ability to raise hurting, it’s the children.”39
children and everything to do with her po- Still, it could have been worse. At
verty. least Murphey didn’t live in Sturgis, in St.
Murphey suspected one of her child- Joseph County, where families are torn apart
ren was being abused in foster care. But no at the second highest rate in the state, a rate
one would listen. “They treated me like I well over double the state average,40 and the
was nothing,” she said. “The foster care sys- courts and DHS have been known to, in ef-
tem treated me like I was a piece of pave- fect, hold children for ransom.
ment to walk on.” ●That’s what happened to Melanie
And it didn’t stop after she finally and Abigail Cerny, twin girls taken from
wrested her children back from DHS. Then, their parents after a “domestic disturbance”
for reasons even the juvenile court could not involving the parents and other relatives.

You’re only damned if you don’t


DHS caseworkers are not jack-booted thugs who relish destroying families. By and
large they are dedicated, idealistic people who want to do what’s best for vulnerable children.
They also typically are undertrained for the enormous responsibilities they face. They are
probably inexperienced, because turnover is so high. And they have crushing caseloads. All
of this makes it almost impossible for even the best worker to make good decisions. They
wind up making bad decisions in all directions, leaving some children in dangerous homes
even as they take others from homes that are safe or could be made safe with the right kinds
of help.
But in terms of what will happen to the caseworker personally, all wrong decisions are
not created equal. The common argument from caseworkers that they are “damned if we do
and damned if we don’t” is disingenuous.
We are aware of no child protective services caseworker anywhere in the country who
has ever been criminally prosecuted, fired, demoted, suspended, or even slapped on the
wrist for taking away too many children. All of these things have happened to workers who
left one child in a dangerous home where something went wrong.
Similarly, agencies themselves sometimes try to duck scrutiny by applying what could
best be called the Goldilocks and the Three Bears defense: “If some people say we take too
many children while others say we take away too few, then we must be just right.”
But the logic of fairytales doesn’t apply to the real world of child welfare. No child
welfare agency comes under months of intense critical media scrutiny for taking away too
many children. No heads roll over it. It is only the highly-publicized deaths of children
“known to the system” that get top agency administrators into trouble.
When it comes to taking children from their parents, DHS and its workers are not
damned if they do and damned if they don’t. They’re only damned if they don’t.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/24

There also were allegations against the fa- Yet the Bloodworth children were
ther of marijuana use and, possibly, drink- torn from their parents and thrown into a
ing. foster home where the foster mother often
Once again, no one was accused of abused another foster child.42 Indeed, as is
abusing the children. explained later in this report, the Bloodworth
children may have been lucky to escape with
their lives.
●Jane Daniels43 really was abused –
“They treated me like I horribly. At 12 she was raped by her father
was nothing. The foster care and her mother’s boyfriend. She immediate-
system treated me like I was a ly told her mother – and they did the right
thing, reporting the rapes to the police.
piece of pavement to walk Four years later, the child wished
on.” she’d never told anyone. Because then, per-
--Sabrina Murphey haps, she wouldn’t have been torn from her
mother, bounced from licensed foster home
to licensed institution and back, only to wind
up in detention – where she probably served
But the children fared less well in
more time than one of the rapists.
foster care. One of the little girls was se-
At the time Jane needed her mother
riously injured by “an adult force blow to the
the most, DHS tore her away; apparently be-
stomach [that] perforated her small intes-
cause they didn’t like the family’s housing,
tine.”
an issue that would repeatedly stymie reuni-
Like any father, Joey Clipfell wanted
fication.
to rush to her daughter’s side. But the court
As Jane was moved from institution
wouldn’t let him. Not because he was
to institution she became depressed and sui-
deemed a danger to the children. But be-
cidal. Over and over again she’d run away.
cause he hadn’t paid all his overdue fines for
Meanwhile, though mom had done
infractions like driving with a suspended li-
nothing wrong, she was forced to comply
cense.
with her cookie-cutter “service plan” - coun-
And what did DHS contribute to all
seling, parent education, and “anger man-
this: Only a warning that they didn’t have
agement” classes.
the staff to supervise a visit in the hospital.
The child would keep running away,
The judge offered nothing but a lec-
and keep winding up in detention.
ture, declaring that “the reason you can’t vis-
Then, terrified of assault by other
it your daughters is because of your situation
residents in her latest group home, Jane ran
and not the courts.”
away again – she ran back to her mother.
But the reason a little girl lying sick
Her mother reported that her daughter had
in a hospital bed couldn’t see her father was
returned, and DHS did nothing.
because the court – and DHS – cared more
Things started to go better. As the
about punishing the father than comforting
Detroit Free Press reported, Jane was “deal-
the child.41
ing with her depression and anxiety, playing
●No one ever accused Teresa and
catcher on a softball team, getting baptized,
Darren Bloodworth of abusing their three
and preparing to start her senior year of high
children. No one said they beat the children
school.” She was doing well in school, tak-
or tortured them or raped them. Their only
ing comfort from her church and looking
crime: living in a dirty home that needed re-
forward to going to college.
pairs to remove lead-based paint.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/25

Then, three months after she’d re- But DHS would not return the child-
turned home, DHS showed up and hauled ren to Harris. As in so many other cases, the
her off to detention again – for running away stumbling block wasn’t abuse or neglect or
from home. But, as Jane told the Free any other kind of unfitness – DHS simply
Press: didn’t like Harris’ housing arrangements.
“I haven’t run away from home.
“I’ve run to home.”44
Unfortunately, such treatment is typ-
ical. According to the Michigan Race Equi- “I haven’t run away from
ty Review: home. I’ve run to home.”
Police officers reported that the vast --Foster child.
majority of youth who go AWOL [from fos-
ter care] are running home to immediate or
extended family. Perhaps it was too much for the duly-
licensed stranger taking care of Joshua to
Indeed, police know that the child’s
handle. She confessed to beating Joshua,
own home is the first place to look.
and was convicted of manslaughter.
But, the Review found, instead of
DHS promised that the case would
asking if the problem is a lousy foster care
be used an example to train foster care
placement, or checking to see if, as in Jane’s
workers.46
case, home is, in fact, the best place for the
● Perhaps the workers who handled
child,
the case of Elena Andron missed the train-
Youth who ‘run away’ are treated ing, because when she, too, made the mis-
criminally. When police apprehend these take of turning to DHS for help, it set in mo-
youth, the practice is to handcuff and trans- tion another tragedy.
port them in the backseat of police cars.45 No one ever accused Elena Andron
of abusing her nine-year-old son, Johnny
●Andrea Harris of Oakland County
Dragomir. No one ever accused her of neg-
made the terrible mistake of calling DHS
lecting him. No one ever said she didn’t
and asking for help. She said she couldn’t
love him. Her only crime was losing her job
control her five boys, who ranged in age
as a factory worker in Dearborn. Her only
from four months to age six. Two of the
mistake: turning to the state of Michigan for
children were placed in foster care with
help when she couldn’t afford to care for her
strangers, the other three with a grandmoth-
son, who could neither walk nor speak.
er. When a sixth child was born, that child
Instead of providing financial assis-
also was taken. But then the grandmother
tance and bringing help into Andron’s home,
said she couldn’t care for the boys anymore
DHS made the same mistake it made in the
either.
Causey case – taking away the child and
But DHS did not provide help for the
throwing him into foster care; this time, a
grandmother so she could keep the children.
state licensed group home.
By now, all of the children had emo-
But his mother soon became alarmed
tional problems – due at least in part to be-
as her son started losing weight. She would
ing separated from their mother. It was par-
call the home, sometimes four times a day to
ticularly hard on the second youngest – Jo-
complain. And she says the group home
shua Causey. Joshua vomited and threw tan-
quickly responded – by branding her irra-
trums every day. A caseworker’s report said
tional and barring her from even visiting her
he had “a difficult time calming himself.”
son.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/26

By the time Johnny Dragomir died, sought help from DHS.


on March 7, 2007, he had lost half his body DHS offered no help with housing,
weight. The Wayne County Medical Ex- no help with a job, and no help with educa-
aminer says the cause of death was malnutri- tion. No help with anything that would al-
tion. low her to be self-supporting and not depend
The group home reportedly closed on men. They gave her only one option:
shortly after Johnny’s death. But it still has Surrender the child to foster care. Then they
its license.47 issued the cookie-cutter no-services “service
plan” and told her she’d have to get a job
and get housing before she could get her
child back.
Once, during a In keeping with the mad rush to ter-
counseling session, the boy mination of parental rights that has characte-
was playing with two plastic rized Michigan child welfare, the state that
offered no help to Caswell terminated her
horses, when he said: rights to the boy 15 months later – right on
“This little horse is going to schedule.
die if he can’t be with his During the termination hearing Cas-
well’s caseworker was asked why Caswell
mother.” never was offered any help with housing.
She didn’t qualify, the caseworker explained
– because her child was in foster care.
DHS never seems to learn that when Meanwhile, it seems, the DHS work-
a desperate mother turns to them for help, er had fallen in love – with the middle-class
they should provide help instead of destroy- foster parents who lived in a nice big home.
ing the family. The boy went there first as a foster child;
● Casey Jo Caswell had plenty of then it became his adoptive home.
problems – most notably a tendency to latch And each time Caswell would have
on to lousy men; which is what some women another child, the caseworker would rush the
do when they have little education and no baby into the same foster/adoptive home.48
way to support themselves. Neither the caseworker, nor anyone
As the Detroit News reported in a else, noticed how unhappy the boy was with
keenly-observed story: his foster parents. Once, during a counsel-
ing session, the boy was playing with two
Caswell admits she was unable to plastic horses, when he said: “This little
properly care for [her] baby. She couldn't horse is going to die if he can’t be with his
support him financially or provide him with mother.”49
a stable home. But at least, she says, she In fact, the conveyor belt carrying
never abused him. babies from impoverished birth mother to
"There were times when I didn't have middle class foster parents didn’t stop, Cas-
money for both of us to eat, so [my son] ate well says, until one day the caseworker told
and I didn't," she said. "I loved being his her “You have to stop having babies because
mom.” the Hollands don’t want any more.”50
When one of those men beat her, and That’s Tim and Lisa Holland. They
the child, Caswell did the right thing – she were the foster parents. Casey Jo Caswell’s
got rid of the man. But, homeless and job- first born was named Ricky. And Ricky
less, she also made that terrible mistake: she Holland’s comment in that therapy session
CYCLE OF FAILURE/27

proved prophetic. away children only when absolutely neces-


If she had it to do all over again, says sary, then the rates of child removal across
Caswell, "I would've kept him with me, in- the country would be roughly the same –
stead of asking the state for help."51 once you included both the biggest factor in
But if you really want to know how actual maltreatment and the biggest factor
fanatical Michigan can be about a take-the- confused with neglect: poverty.
child-and-run approach to child welfare, if
you really want to know how much an adop-
tion-at-all-costs mentality pervades DHS During the time after
and the courts, consider this: During the
time after Ricky Holland had disappeared,
Ricky Holland had
but his body had not yet been found, during disappeared, but his body had
the time police already strongly suspected not yet been found, during the
the Hollands of murdering Ricky, the Mich-
igan Department of Human Services gave
time police already strongly
the Hollands final approval to adopt another suspected the Hollands of
foster child in their care.52 murdering Ricky, the Michigan
And remember the Bloodworth
children – the children taken from their par-
Department of Human
ents only because of a dirty home and lead- Services gave the Hollands
based paint? They, too, had been placed final approval to adopt
with Tim and Lisa Holland.53
another foster child in their
The data behind the cases care.
It’s hard to dismiss so many cases
with exactly the same pattern as some kind
of “aberration” in a system that, otherwise, In fact, rates of removal vary enorm-
supposedly wouldn’t even think of taking ously. Some states are considerably worse
away a child needlessly. But that won’t stop than Michigan. But states that repeatedly
DHS and the private agencies from trying. are pointed to as national models for child
Spokespersons for child welfare safety do far better:
agencies seem to turn into robots when ● Thanks to a class-action lawsuit
asked about these issues – push a button, get brought by the Bazelon Center for Mental
a boilerplate response: “Our first goal is al- Health Law, Alabama is rebuilding its entire
ways to try to keep families together,” they child welfare system to emphasize keeping
say. “We’re all for prevention,” they say. families together. (The Center’s Legal Di-
“Foster care is a last resort,” they say. “We rector is a member of NCCPR’s Board of
can’t take children on our own authority, a Directors.) Alabama takes away children at
judge has to approve everything we do,” one of the lowest rates in the nation, a rate
they say. (See Reality Check, page 45). 25 percent below the rate in Michigan.54
“We’re damned if we do and damned if we But the state has cut the rate of reabuse of
don’t,” they say. (See You’re only damned children left in their own homes in half,55
if you don’t, p. 23). and the independent, court-appointed moni-
And none of it is true. tor has found that children are safer now
The evidence of wrongful removal than they were before the changes.56 That’s
goes way beyond the case histories. For why the New York Times put the story of the
starters, there’s the fact that if states took Alabama reforms on its front page.57
CYCLE OF FAILURE/28

Comparison shopping in Grand Rapids


LYING IN WAIT FOR A “’GOTCHA’ MOMENT”
Mary Callahan is a foster parent from Maine who got fed up with the fact that almost
every child the state placed with her never needed to be taken from his or her birth parents.
(Thanks to James Beougher, who reformed the Maine system after he was recruited from
Michigan, that happens a lot less often now.)
Callahan has a term for how the system works. It puts a family under a microscope,
judges anything and everything, and then lies in wait, for as long as it takes for a parent to
slip up. She calls it the “’Gotcha’ moment.”
And that’s how DHS, a private agency and a judge with an apparent penchant for
comparison shopping among parents, got to transplant a child from a mother whose only
crimes were poverty and pot smoking, to a well-off adoptive couple.
The bias was so blatant that the Michigan Supreme Court, normally as fanatical about
pushing adoption as any in the country, couldn’t stand it. The court blasted Kent County
Family Court Judge Patricia Gardner and suggested that her initial decision “may have been
influenced by the relative advantages of the adoptive home compared to the mother’s home.”

“Several of the trial court’s written findings of fact on remand sug-


gest that it may have been influenced by the relative advantages of the
adoptive home compared to the mother’s home. … This type of compar-
ison may explain why the respondent’s parental rights were terminated
despite what we believe is the lack of clear and convincing evidence in
support of that termination. ”
--Michigan Supreme Court decision, In re: JK, Minor

But Judge Gardner, the private agency, and DHS simply let the process of reunifica-
tion drag out – until finally getting their “gotcha moment.”
The child at the center of the case is Jacob Kucharski. He was 16-months-old when
he was taken from his mother, Melissa. The only reason: Melissa was a teenage mother who
smoked marijuana.58
The case was subcontracted to Catholic Social Services, which managed to botch it
from the start, moving the child into five different foster homes over 14 months – though for
some of that time, at least, mother and child were in the same foster home.
At first CSS wrote glowing reports about Melissa Kucharski. They said she was such
a good mother that she didn’t even need parenting classes or a psychological evaluation - a
conclusion that is almost unheard-of.
But 14 months after Jacob was taken away, DHS and CSS suddenly reversed course
and petitioned for termination for parental rights.
There is nothing in news accounts to explain the sudden change. But at this point,
Jacob was in the home of that well-off couple, the one that would be described in a news ac-
count as a “good, Christian, wonderful, stable family,"59 – and they wanted to adopt him.
The termination petition made allegations that, the Michigan Supreme Court would
find, simply weren’t true - like a false claim that Melissa still was smoking pot.
Indeed, when the case came to trial, CSS admitted that Melissa had jumped through
CYCLE OF FAILURE/29

each and every hoop. She completed her substance abuse program. She completed her in-
dependent living program. She had a job. She had housing. She’d been drug free for a year.
She even got the “psych eval” – and passed it.
So CSS simply brought up a whole new issue - playing the bonding card.
They argued, in effect, that because DHS took the child away for little or no reason,
and because DHS and CSS then bounced the child from foster home to foster home, making
it harder for him to love or trust anyone, and because then they placed him with the foster
parents they liked much better, and because then they filed a termination petition and cut off
all visits (often standard operating procedure in Michigan) – because of all that, the child had
trouble bonding with his mother. Therefore, DHS and CSS argued, he should be taken from
his mother forever.
By this reasoning, of course, if someone kidnaps your child at birth, flees to Mexico,
takes good care of him, and then returns two years later, the kidnapper should be allowed to
keep the child because, after all, they’re “bonded.”
In fact, the mother’s therapist, assigned by CSS, said that, in spite of all this, mother
and child were bonded, and the family should be reunited. The therapist scheduled weekly
sessions to help mother and child with bonding, but the foster mother undercut them by fail-
ing to bring the child to several sessions.
Less than a month after these sessions began, CSS ordered up another evaluation,
from a “bonding specialist” recommended by the foster mother.
After one session lasting less than an hour, she told the court that mother and child
were not well-bonded – though she admitted this may well have been because the child had
been bounced through so many foster homes.

By this reasoning, of course, if someone kidnaps your child at


birth, flees to Mexico, takes good care of him, and then returns two
years later, the kidnapper should be allowed to keep the child because,
after all, they’re “bonded.”

The claim by this “expert” was based in part on the fact that Jacob had speech prob-
lems – and that supposedly was evidence of poor “interactions” between mother and child.
But after Jacob had his tonsils and adenoids removed, and tubes placed in his ears, the
speech problems disappeared.60
But the CSS caseworker had other “evidence:” Kucharski sometimes seemed lethar-
gic during parts of the visits (possibly explained by the fact that she was working to complete
her high school degree while also working the job she had to get to get her child back) and
she sometimes brought Jacob candy to visits that took place in the morning.
That was enough for Judge Gardner, who not only terminated parental rights, but
even rushed to finalize the adoption while Melissa’s appeal still was pending before the Su-
preme Court.
Indeed, it may have been that act – stepping on the prerogatives of the Supreme Court
justices – more than destroying a family based on almost no evidence, that really upset a Su-
preme Court whose fanaticism for adoption is well documented (and discussed elsewhere in
this report).
Nevertheless, in a 6 to 0 decision with one judge abstaining (though it is clear she
would have dissented had she felt she could participate)61 the court excoriated Judge Gard-
ner. The justices declared that:
Several of the trial court’s written findings of fact on remand suggest that it may have
CYCLE OF FAILURE/30

been influenced by the relative advantages of the adoptive home compared to the mother’s
home. We remind the family-division judges of what we said nearly fifty years ago:
“It is totally inappropriate to weigh the advantages of a foster home against the home
of the natural and legal parents. Their fitness as parents and question of neglect of their
children must be measured by statutory standards without reference to any particular alter-
native home which may be offered to the [child].”
We note the trial court’s fact-finding on remand simply because it suggests that im-
proper comparisons between the homes of the adoptive and natural parents may have been
made in determining whether to terminate the respondent’s parental rights. This type of com-
parison may explain why the respondent’s parental rights were terminated despite what we
believe is the lack of clear and convincing evidence in support of that termination. …
Rather than returning the child after the natural mother completed every task asked of
her, the agency delayed the child’s security and stability with his own mother and sought the
opinion of a different therapist who claimed that the respondent lacked the proper bonding
and attachment to properly parent her child.
But though the Supreme Court reversed the adoption, it neglected to do two things: It
neglected to order Jabob’s immediate return to his mother, expecting DHS and CSS to act in
good faith and begin a meaningful transition. And it neglected to remove Judge Gardner
from the case.
So they watched and they waited.
And the pressure grew. It was clear from news coverage that the Supreme Court de-
cision sent shivers through newsrooms – where everyone has a friend or a colleague who
adopted a child, and almost no one has a friend or a colleague who was poor and had her
child taken away.
The sympathies of the Grand Rapids Press were apparent. There was the story about
the saintly adoptive parents – including a statement by Jacob’s adoptive grandfather see-
mingly suggesting that it might have been better if Jacob had died than been ordered re-
turned to his own mother.
“It’s like a death in the family,” the grandfather said, and then added: “In some ways
it’s worse than death because the child’s still alive and we know what’s coming.”62
Imagine what that army of caseworkers, psychologists – and Judge Gardner – would
have made of it had Melissa Kucharski said anything like that.
Then came a story on the wisdom of Judge Gardner, a story so fawning that she came
across as someone who could have taught King Solomon a thing or two. Even Kucharski’s
own lawyer in the trial court (not her appellate lawyer) spoke up for the judge.
Among other things, Judge Gardner talked about how sometimes she wished she
could just take the kids home herself; how Kent County is a “prevention rich community” and
how, many times, birth parents understand that having their children taken from them forever
was the right thing to do. “In many cases, parents are able to say, ‘I was given every oppor-
tunity, I didn’t do it, can’t do it or won’t do it’ and say ‘I agree adoption is best for the kids.’”63
Especially, it seems, if you wait long enough.
Eventually, Kucharski lost her job and didn’t tell the court. Why this was the court’s
business is unclear.
Gotcha!
Judge Gardner promptly held it against her – taking pains to claim the problem wasn’t
the unemployment (since that would imply she cared about Kucharski’s low income) but the
failure to tell the court.
One can only imagine the stress on a young mother at the center of this storm. Were
she middle class she might have gone to her family doctor and gotten a prescription for a
tranquilizer. Instead, she flunked two drug tests allegedly because she smoked pot.
Gotcha!
Judge Gardner herself ordered DHS to initiate a second round of termination proceed-
ings. And Kucharski got the message. She was never going to get Jacob back. She surren-
CYCLE OF FAILURE/31

dered her parental rights.


At which point, for the first time, she won praise from the Grand Rapids Press. (That’s
pretty typical. When an impoverished birth mother fights for her child against well-off adop-
tive parents, the one time the birth mother always is praised is if she gives up.) Though the
paper went on to rub salt into the wound with a huge, gloating feature about the adoptive
parents and 80 friends and family celebrating their final victory.64
__________________

The standards in Kent County apparently are different if the parents happen to be
middle class, and adoptive.
In 2006, a couple once named Michigan’s adoptive parents of the year by the state
Foster and Adoptive Parents Association was charged with abuse after some of their 13
adopted children came forward to say they were beaten with belts and an extension cord, not
fed properly and feared being sent back to the couple,65 charges far more serious than any-
thing leveled at Melissa Kucharski. They also alleged the adoptive parents ignored com-
plaints about sexual abuse by siblings; the parents said they didn’t know.66
The children were placed in foster care and the judge (not judge Gardner, this time)
said the adoptive parents would have to make “radical changes” to get the children back –
suggesting she found the allegations credible. But this time, the judge refused to terminate
the adoptive parents’ parental rights. They gave up those rights voluntarily three months lat-
er.67
And while Kucharski was regularly vilified in the local press, the adoptive parents got
far more solicitous treatment. A story in the Grand Rapids Press on the judge’s decision not
to terminate parental rights was filled with sympathetic comments about the adoptive par-
ents, barely mentioned the allegations and said that the case raised questions such as:
“Would this model couple, respected at church, brutalize the children? Did the children make
up stories of abuse, as alleged by the defense?”68
In the case of Melissa Kucharski and the child taken from her, the Michigan child wel-
fare system functioned as it so often does. It’s the place where a “good, Christian, wonder-
ful, stable family” can step right up and take a poor person’s child for their very own.

● That’s also the lesson from Illi- double the rate in Wayne County.
nois, whose progress was noted earlier. Illi- This may be because, in a county
nois takes away children at an even lower that sees as much poverty as Wayne, people
rate than Alabama, and less than half the may be less likely to confuse that poverty
rate of Michigan. And in Illinois, as in Al- with “neglect.” Conversely, relatively weal-
abama, independent court-appointed moni- thy counties, such as, for example, Grand
tors have found that, as the number of child- Traverse, which see relatively little poverty,
ren taken away has declined, child safety has may be much more likely to confuse it with
improved.69 neglect, explaining why Grand Traverse has
But you don’t have to look outside the third highest rate of removal in Michi-
Michigan to see such disparities. Again, gan.
once poverty is factored in, a child is more Racism also appears to be a factor.
than three times as likely to be taken from We know that Black families are no
his parents in Macomb, Isabella, or Ingham more likely to abuse or neglect children than
Counties than a child living in Wayne, Bay white families. Yet racial disparities per-
or Shiawassee Counties. 70 meate Michigan, and American, child wel-
And when one compares Wayne fare.
County to the rest of the state, the average But the degree varies. In Wayne
rate of removal for the rest of the state is County, with a relatively low rate of remov-
CYCLE OF FAILURE/32

al, a Black child is 1.69 times more likely to Of course, while a high rate of re-
be in foster care. But in affluent, predomi- moval almost always is a sign of a bad sys-
nantly white Macomb County, with one of tem, a low rate does not necessarily mean a
the highest rates of removal, Black children system is good. There is a right way and a
are more than five times as likely as white wrong way to reduce the number of children
children to be in foster care. In Oakland taken from their parents. The point of this
County, where the rate of removal is double comparison is simply that it is possible to
the rate in Wayne, Black children are more take proportionately far fewer children than
than three times as likely to be in foster care Michigan takes while improving child safe-
as white children.71 ty. Therefore, there is no excuse for Michi-
That should come as no surprise, gan failing to do either one.
given the war waged against families by the
former Oakland County District Attorney,
who took to having his own office take the
children when DHS wouldn’t. It is possible to take
It’s possible, of course, that places proportionately far fewer
like Oakland and Macomb Counties are, in children than Michigan takes
fact, cesspools of depravity, with double and
triple the amount of child abuse found in while improving child safety.
Wayne or Bay Counties. It’s more likely Therefore, there is no excuse
that large numbers of children in innocent for Michigan failing to do
families suffered because both a take-the-
child-and-run mentality, and racial bias, either one.
have taken root in the Oakland and Macomb
child welfare systems.
Similarly, you may be sure that some But the evidence that DHS takes
in Michigan’s foster care-industrial complex children needlessly and fails to provide the
will claim, falsely, that it’s the counties tak- help families need to reunite goes beyond
ing lots of children who are right and the the numbers and the case histories.
others are ignoring lots of child abuse. It’s amazing what people in the sys-
We know the claim is false because tem itself will say when promised anonymi-
other states with lower rates of removal than ty for a report few people are expected to
Michigan have outstanding records of child read.
safety. That shows it is possible to take far That, it seems, is the lesson from the
fewer children, and it is the counties – and results when two outside organizations
states – with high rates of removal that are commissioned by the Michigan Supreme
out of line. Court to write a report on the functioning of
Similarly, in several other states, Michigan courts in child welfare cases sur-
counties with low rates of removal tend to veyed every constituency involved in child
have the better safety outcomes. DHS, welfare in Michigan.72
however, was unable to provide such data Among the results:
for Michigan, even though it must report the ● Federal law requires that states
statewide outcomes to the federal govern- make “reasonable efforts” to keep families
ment. (In general, NCCPR has encountered together before resorting to foster care,
only one other state child welfare agency, when it is safe to do so. A judge has to cer-
the one in Arizona, as incapable of provid- tify either that reasonable efforts were made,
ing basic data as Michigan.) or that making such efforts would have been
CYCLE OF FAILURE/33

contrary to the welfare of the child. The expect judges to ask such questions, when
judge does this by checking a box on a form. parents’ own court-appointed lawyers typi-
If a judge finds DHS failed to make reason- cally don’t bother to raise the issue.73 On
able efforts even though it was safe to do so, the other hand, lawyers may not be raising
he still can rubber-stamp the removal – but the issue because, according to the Race Eq-
the federal government won’t help pay the uity Review, “one judicial officer reported
cost. that any objection on reasonable efforts
would be ‘a losing argument.’”74
● So called “service plans” are sup-
posed to be geared to the needs of individual
Forty percent of judges families. They aren’t. According to the re-
admitted that they lied, port: “Many jurists,75 attorneys, and others
and said DHS had made complained that caseworkers … make the
same recommendations for everyone.”
“reasonable efforts” in And then it gets worse.
cases where the judges ● Parents are set up to fail. Accord-
really didn’t believe it. ing to the report:
Both parents and attorneys men-
tioned that so many tasks and service ap-
But in the survey, 20 percent of the pointments are set up for parents that often
judges said they always concluded that rea- they simply cannot meet them in their entire-
sonable efforts had been made – in other ty. Indeed parents’ attorneys complained in
words their child welfare agencies were per- one county that it was a social service pat-
fect. Another 70 percent said they rarely tern intended to make parents fail and head
concluded otherwise. them down the path toward termination of
But even more significant: 40 per- parental rights…
cent of judges admitted that they lied, and It wasn’t just the parents and their
said DHS had made “reasonable efforts” lawyers who said it – even prosecutors
in cases where the judges really didn’t be- agreed.
lieve it. In half those cases, the judges ad-
mitted they lied because, if they didn’t, their One prosecutor said, if you are poor,
county would have to pick up the federal lack transportation and a job, you can’t get
share of the cost. And if that’s the propor- to all the appointments that the social work-
tion who will admit it on a survey … ers pile on, with the result that you lose your
● Judges were asked about the spe- children because you don’t comply with re-
cific issues they raised in determining if rea- quirements.
sonable efforts had been made. ● “Rigid DHS policies” prevent fam-
--One-third admitted never even ask- ilies from getting services. Said one judge:
ing what services were offered to the family. “Sometimes DHS says that families are not
--Forty six percent admitted they on- eligible for services and I do not know
ly sometimes, or never, asked if the services why.” (Recall Casey Jo Caswell being told
were sufficient or appropriate. she could not get help with housing because
--Fifty-seven percent often failed to her son, Ricky, already was in foster care.)
ask if the caseworker actually provided the ● Even where the policies them-
services. selves are less of a problem, DHS doesn’t
Of course, maybe it’s too much to follow them.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/34

Among the most important factors in terribly wrong and now they are being pu-
reuniting families is keeping them in touch nished. One recent study of foster care
while the child is in foster care. That means “alumni” found they had twice the rate of
regular visits are essential. They also are vi- post-traumatic stress disorder of Gulf War
tal for a child’s well-being while in substi- veterans and only 20 percent could be said
tute care. Otherwise a child is even more to be “doing well.” How can throwing
likely to feel alone, abandoned and terrified. children into a system which churns out
Michigan’s requirements are minim- walking wounded four times out of five be
al (and typical). In cases where visits are al- “erring on the side of the child”?
lowed at all, parents are supposed to be able
to visit their children once a week. But the
casereading done in connection with CR’s
lawsuit found that this requirement is almost “One prosecutor said, if
never met. DHS also fails to meet similarly you are poor, lack transporta-
minimal (and similarly typical) requirements tion and a job, you can’t get to
for caseworkers to visit birth parents and
foster children. 76 all the appointments that the
social workers pile on, with
Who is harmed? the result that you lose your
There are some, of course, who are
pleased that Michigan takes away so many
children because you don’t
children so easily and with almost no due comply with requirements.”
process for families. They cling to the myth --Michigan Court Improvement
that it makes children safer. Program Reassessment
And they have some great applause
lines. Sure, adults may suffer if a child is
wrongly taken, they say, but we have to put A second study, of 15,000 cases typ-
“child protection” ahead of “family preser- ical of those found on workers’ caseloads, is
vation.” We have to defend “children’s even more devastating. That study found
rights” they say. And, over and over they that even maltreated children left in their
tell us we have to “err on the side of the own homes with little or no help fared bet-
child.” ter, on average, than comparably-maltreated
In fact, there can be no child protec- children placed in foster care. (See Michigan
tion without family preservation. Children ignores the “evidence base,” p. 36.)
have a right to live safely in their own • All that harm can occur even when
homes and not be subjected to the torment of the foster home is a good one. The majority
needless foster care. And there probably is are. But the rate of abuse in foster care is far
no phrase in the child welfare lexicon that higher than generally realized and far higher
has done more harm to children than “err on than in the general population.77 Switching
the side of the child.” to orphanages won’t help -- the record of in-
• When a child is needlessly thrown stitutions is even worse. In fact it’s so bad,
into foster care, he loses not only mom and that we plan to issue a separate report on in-
dad but often brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, stitutionalization.
grandparents, teachers, friends and class- The figures from all of these studies
mates. For a young enough child it can be are far higher than official numbers indicate
an experience akin to a kidnapping. Other – because the official numbers are not objec-
children feel they must have done something
CYCLE OF FAILURE/35

tive scholarship, the official numbers are right kinds of help.


from agencies investigating themselves. That is almost always the real expla-
But in Michigan it’s worse. In Mich- nation for the horror-story cases that rightly
igan John Goad’s report found that DHS make headlines.
manipulates the data to make even the offi- If a child in real danger is over-
cial figures concerning abuse in foster care looked because workers were too busy in-
look lower than they really are.78 vestigating a family whose only crime was
asking for help in obtaining a stove79 or too
busy needlessly throwing some other child
None of this means no into foster care, how is that “erring on the
side of the child”?
child ever should be taken None of this means no child ever
from her or his parents. should be taken from her or his parents. Ra-
Rather, it means that foster ther, it means that foster care is an extremely
toxic intervention that must be used sparing-
care is an extremely toxic ly and in small doses. But for decades,
intervention that must be used Michigan has turned back efforts at reform
sparingly and in small doses. and instead prescribed mega-doses of foster
care.
But for decades, Michigan has Unfortunately, while CR realized
turned back efforts at reform that the caseworkers are overwhelmed, CR
and instead prescribed failed to grasp the reason for it.
CR and DHS assumed that the prob-
mega-doses of foster care. lem was too few caseworkers. Though in
many cases the settlement doesn’t require it,
DHS has indicated it will try to reduce ca-
Furthermore, the more a foster care seloads simply by hiring more workers - ap-
system is overwhelmed with children who parently to do the same work they’ve been
don’t need to be there, the less safe it be- doing all along.80
comes, as agencies are tempted to overload In fact, the problem isn’t so much
foster homes and lower standards for foster too few workers as too many cases. The
parents. If a child is taken from a perfectly Race Equity Review found that Michigan
safe home only to be beaten, raped or killed “screens in” far too many trivial allegations
in foster care, how is that “erring on the side and poverty cases, subjecting families to
of the child”? And is it really any comfort needless, traumatic investigations – and
to know that Timothy Boss, Joshua Causey, wasting the valuable time of workers.81
Allison Newman, Ricky Holland, Isaac Their time is further wasted taking
Lethbridge and now Johnny Dragomir all away children needlessly.
died with their “children’s rights” on? If you just go on a hiring binge,
• But even that isn’t the worst of it. without making the hiring part of a compre-
Everyone knows how badly caseworkers are hensive reform plan, it simply further wi-
overwhelmed – the data on that from Michi- dens the net of needless intervention into
gan are, well, overwhelming. With no time families. The new workers chase down lots
to investigate any case properly, workers of- more new cases that shouldn’t be investi-
ten make bad decisions in all directions – gated in the first place and take still more
leaving some children in dangerous homes, children needlessly. So all you get is the
even as more children are taken from homes same lousy system only bigger.
that are safe or could be made safe with the
CYCLE OF FAILURE/36

Michigan ignores the “evidence base”


The buzzword in child welfare lately is “evidence-based.” What that really means is:
How dare proponents of any new, innovative approach to child welfare expect to get funding
if they can’t dot every i and cross every t on evaluations proving the innovation’s efficacy
beyond a shadow of a doubt? Old, non-innovative programs, however, are not held to this
standard.
Indeed, evidence that those old, non-innovative programs are a failure routinely is ig-
nored. So DHS workers, judges and others rationalize away a mountain of evidence and con-
vince themselves that needlessly tearing apart families is necessary to protect children. It all
suggests a disturbing lack of knowledge of the latest research on foster care.
There has long been a wealth of evidence that when children are left in their own
homes and the families are given intensive support through programs like Michigan’s pio-
neering Families First program, this approach is not only more humane (and less expensive)
than foster care it also is safer than foster care. A series of studies of Families First and simi-
lar Intensive Family Preservation Services programs have proven this.82
But the new research goes much farther. It finds that children usually are better off
left in their own homes even when the family doesn’t get intensive help.
The largest and most comprehensive of these studies was released in 2007 by a re-
searcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He compared outcomes for 15,000
children. He excluded the extreme cases – the horror story cases in which any worker with
enough time to investigate would agree the children should be taken from their homes. In-
stead he focused on the “in-between cases” the ones in which there were real problems, but
some workers chose foster care and others chose to keep the family together. These are the
kinds that make up the overwhelming majority of cases seen by workers for DHS and similar
agencies.
The study compared outcomes for children placed in foster care and comparably mal-
treated children left in their own homes. As the children grew up:
● The children left in their own homes were less likely to become pregnant.
●The children left in their own homes were less likely to be arrested.
● The children left in their own homes were less likely to be unemployed.83
This is not the only such study. A University of Minnesota study, released in 2006, al-
so compared children in foster care to comparably-maltreated children left with their own
families who got little or no help. Once again, on average, the children left in their own
homes did better.84
Still another study, of foster-care alumni, including many who had been in one of the
nation’s best foster care programs, found that the alumni had twice the level of post-
traumatic stress disorder of Gulf War veterans and, as young adults, only 20 percent could be
said to be doing well.
This study also found that one in three of the alumni reported being abused by a fos-
ter parent or another adult in a foster home.85 The study didn’t even ask about one of the
most common forms of abuse in foster care, foster children abusing each other.
As for group homes and, especially “residential treatment centers,” the evidence that
they are largely useless – or worse – is so overwhelming that it needs its own report. We
plan to issue one later this year.
But what about cases in which the parent, usually the mother, is addicted to drugs?
Why bother with mothers in those cases? Once again, for the sake of the children. For a
look at the evidence base in such cases, and a typical case, see When the issue is drugs, p.
40.
It would be wise for there to be a less casual attitude about throwing children into a
system that churns out walking wounded four times out of five. That is the only reasonable
conclusion from the “evidence base.”
CYCLE OF FAILURE/37

Michigan should indeed use the new caretakers while they went to jobs they must
money promised in the settlement to hire take under state and federal welfare-to-work
workers – but they should be prevention laws.87
workers, family preservation workers and ● As the Lansing State Journal Re-
drug treatment workers. ported in 2006:
That way, the new hires really will
Rising poverty also means some
lower caseloads for everyone, make children
children enter the system solely because
safer, and avoid traumatizing children with
their parents can't afford shelter or clothing
needless foster care.
or food, said Sharon Claytor Peters, [then-]
president and chief executive of Michigan's
How taking fewer children can Children, a Lansing-based child advocacy
make children safer group. "Neglect is directly related to the
One reason systems that have re- material ability to provide for kids," she
formed to embrace family preservation im- said.88
prove child safety is that workers are less Another spokeswoman for the group
likely to be distracted by needless foster said: "The line between neglect and poverty
care. needs to be clarified. With no support ser-
Another reason is simply that most vices, families are falling more deeply into
parents who lose their children to foster are poverty."89
not who most people think they are.
Contrary to the common stereotype,
most parents who lose their children to fos-
ter care are neither brutally abusive nor There is hardly an
hopelessly addicted. Far more common are impoverished child in
cases in which a family’s poverty has been Michigan who could not, at
confused with child “neglect.”
And no wonder. Michigan’s defini- some point in her or his life,
tion of neglect includes “…the failure to be branded “neglected” if a
provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, or caseworker so chose.
medical care.”86 And while some state laws
include an exception for cases when a parent And often, they so
simply can’t afford the food, clothing, shel- choose.
ter, or medical care, the Michigan statute
does not. (Even in states where such excep-
tions exist, they are routinely ignored.) So
Data from around the country
there is hardly an impoverished child in
confirm those impressions:
Michigan who could not, at some point in
• Three separate studies since 1996
her or his life, be branded “neglected” if a
have found that 30 percent of America’s
caseworker so chose.
foster children could be safely in their own
And often, they so choose.
homes right now, if their birth parents had
• In Genesee County, from 2000 to
safe, affordable housing.90
2003, the foster-care population doubled –
• A fourth study found that “in terms
and even the head of the county DHS office
of reunification, even substance abuse is not
at the time said one of the main reasons was
as important a factor as income or housing
the removal of children from women forced
in determining whether children will remain
to leave those children with unsuitable
with their families.”91 (Recall the case of
CYCLE OF FAILURE/38

Johnny Dragomir, who died in a foster home • The former head of one of the
after his mother couldn’t afford to take care nation’s largest child welfare systems, Los
of him, or the Bloodworth children, taken Angeles County’s, said that up to 50 percent
away and placed with Tim and Lisa Holland, of the county’s foster children could have
solely because their home was dirty and had remained in their own homes had their
lead-based paint.) parents gotten the right kinds of help.93
There is one circumstance, and only
one, in which almost anyone in child
welfare, from frontline caseworker to
The biggest addiction agency chief, effectively will admit to
problem in child welfare is not tearing apart families because they’re poor.
substance-abusing parents, All you have to do is accuse them of tearing
apart families because they’re Black.
though that problem is serious “No, no, it has nothing to do with
and real. The biggest race,” they’ll say. “We only take away more
addiction problem in child Black children because they’re more likely
to be poor.” Of course, these are the same
welfare is powerful, well- people who also say they never take children
connected private child because of poverty.
welfare agencies that are In fact, there is an enormous body of
evidence that both kinds of bias are at play.
addicted to their per-diem For example, in one study, when workers
payments. And they are were given otherwise identical hypothetical
putting their addiction ahead cases, they were more likely to deem the
child at risk if the family was described as
of the children. Black.94 And recall how, in Michigan,
caseworkers describe an alleged history of
substance abuse very differently depending
• A study of "lack of supervision" on the race of the family.95
cases by the Child Welfare League of Other cases fall on a broad conti-
America found that in 52 percent of the nuum between the extremes, the parents nei-
cases studied, the service needed most was ther all victim nor all villain. What these
what one might expect -- day care or cases have in common is the fact that there
babysitting.92 But the "service" offered are a wide variety of proven programs that
most often was foster care. can keep these children in their own homes,
And across the country, several and do it with a far better track record for
people who have run child welfare systems safety than foster care.
have acknowledged that their own systems Many of those “in-between cases”
take away too many children. involve substance abuse. But even there, the
• In Washington D.C., where the fos- research is clear that drug treatment for the
ter care system was run for several years by parents almost always is a better first choice
the federal courts, the first receiver named than foster care for the children. (See When
by the court to run the agency found that be- the issue is drugs page 40).
tween one-third and one-half of D.C.'s foster
children could be returned to their parents Addicted to per diems
immediately -- if they just had decent hous- But every time anyone in Michigan
ing. has tried to face up to these challenges and
CYCLE OF FAILURE/39

fundamentally reform the system, that foster This can be seen in one telling statis-
care-industrial complex has stood in the tic: In Michigan cases where the state main-
way. Michigan’s private agencies are paid tains direct supervision of a child after the
for every day they hold a child in foster care. child is placed in foster care, only 40 percent
If they do what they are supposed to do and of children return home within a year.
work to reunite a family or, when that’s tru- That’s certainly bad enough. But when
ly not possible, try for adoption, the pay- children are handed over to private agencies,
ment stops. paid for each day they hold the child in fos-
ter care, the proportion returned home with-
in a year falls to 30 percent. And for tech-
nical reasons, this actually understates the
The will to survive can gap in performance.98
induce in non-profits a form of The biggest addiction problem in
greed that is as corrosive of child welfare is not substance-abusing par-
ents, though that problem is serious and real.
common decency as the The biggest addiction problem in child wel-
worst corporate behavior. fare is powerful, well-connected private
child welfare agencies that are addicted to
their per-diem payments. And they are
putting their addiction ahead of the children.
As James Beougher, former director
So try to divert more money to safe,
of child and family services for Michigan
proven alternatives and the foster care-
DHS, has written: “When you pay for foster
industrial complex will stand in the way.
care on a per diem basis – you get lots of
Try to curb institutional care and the foster
days in foster care.” 96 Beougher’s attempts
care-industrial complex will do everything it
to change that never got past the pilot stage
can to stop it. Try to place more children
in Michigan – but he’s now hailed as a hero
with extended families and in their own
in Maine, for transforming one of the worst
neighborhoods, and the private agencies will
systems in the country into a national leader.
march up to Lansing to urge that it stop –
(See The Michigan child welfare brain
even if that may mean the state has to vi-
drain, p. 60).
olate federal law.
So it’s no wonder that the National
Most of the time, the agencies won’t
Commission on Children, one of the most
actually say they oppose the idea – not out
distinguished groups ever to study child
loud, not directly, not overtly. Instead,
welfare, found that children often are
they’ll say how much they favor prevention
removed from their families "prematurely or
– but… They’ll talk about how they, too,
unnecessarily" because federal aid formulas
wish children didn’t have to be institutiona-
give states "a strong financial incentive" to
lized, but…
do so rather than provide services to keep
That’s how it’s done in child wel-
families together.97
fare: Never say no to a good idea, just “Yes,
Of course the agencies will tell you
but…” it to death.
they don’t even think about such things –
Nothing changed in Illinois until
they claim they care only about “the best in-
things got so bad that the elected govern-
terests of the child.” After all, they say,
ment had to stand up to the permanent gov-
they’re non-profits. But the will to survive
ernment. Finally, they took on the foster
can induce in non-profits a form of greed
care-industrial complex.
that is as corrosive of common decency as
Instead of simply handing out per diem
the worst corporate behavior.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/40

payments and rubber-stamping license re- homes or get them adopted wouldget no
newals, Illinois forced its private agencies to more referrals. Some of those agencies
compete for business, and prove they were closed.
helping children. Agencies that couldn’t re- And lo and behold: Suddenly the “in-
turn enough children safely to their own tractable” became tractable. The “dys-

When the issue is drugs


Many of what we call the “in-between cases” in child welfare involve substance abuse.
And that raises an obvious question: Why even bother trying to help the parents in such cases?
The reason to “bother” is not for the sake of the parents, but, again, for their children.
University of Florida Medical Center researchers studied two groups of infants born with
cocaine in their systems. One group was placed in foster care, the other with birth mothers able
to care for them. After six months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant
development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, the children placed with their
99
birth mothers did better. For the foster children, being taken from their mothers was more toxic
than the cocaine.
The problems are less, however, when the newborns were placed with relatives. So in that
sense, Sheryl Calloway’s newborn daughter was lucky.
Calloway acknowledges that DHS was right to intervene in her case. She’d struggled with
addiction for years, even as she successfully raised two sons.
Those sons were adults when Calloway’s daughter was born. DHS would not let Calloway
take the child home from the hospital.
At the initial Team Decisionmaking meeting in her case, Calloway says, “I felt attacked and
belittled.” Caseworkers were reluctant to let one of her adult sons and his wife take custody,
though ultimately they relented.
But there was no drug treatment program available where mother and daughter could live
together.
For awhile, there was no drug treatment program at all.
Day after day, Calloway would call the treatment program every morning at 4:00am – “be-
cause that’s when they discharged people,” Calloway said. Finally, she got into a short term “de-
tox” program, but she had to wait again for longer term treatment.
Seven months after her daughter was taken, Calloway had completed treatment and
passed one drug test after another. But it still wasn’t enough for DHS – those two barriers DHS
always seems to put in the way came up again: Although it is perfectly legal for people who are
unemployed and lack adequate housing to have children in the first place, after DHS takes your
children, they will demand that you get a job and get housing before giving the children back. But
often, they do almost nothing to help families get the housing or the job.
So even if the child wasn’t taken because of poverty in the first place, poverty is what pre-
vents reunification.
It took another five months before Calloway was legally reunified with her daughter – or as
she puts it “unified” – since she never had been allowed to have custody of her daughter in the
first place.
In one other respect Calloway’s daughter was lucky: Calloway had an understanding fos-
ter care caseworker who saw her strengths and those of her adult children.
After six months, Calloway was allowed to move in with the family.
But had there been drug treatment available immediately in a program where parents
could stay with their young children, the separation never would have been necessary.
It is extremely difficult to take a swing at “bad mothers” without the blow landing on their
children. If we really believe all the rhetoric about putting the needs of children first, then we need
to put those needs ahead of everything – including how we may feel about their parents. That
doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with addicts – it does mean that drug treatment for the
parent is almost always a better first choice than foster care for the child.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/41

functional” became functional, and, as noted plenty of good, capable people in Michigan
at the start of this report, the foster care pop- child welfare. All that is missing is the will
ulation plummeted from 50,000 to under to do it – the will to stop embracing all that
16,000. The providers also had to show the is worst in American child welfare, start
children were safe in their new placements – seeking out all that is best, and stand up to
and independent court-appointed monitors the foster care-industrial complex. Michi-
confirmed it. Under the new arrangement, gan can be a contender again.
child safety has improved. It just needs to learn the lessons from
So it can be done. We know what its own past.
works, there is enough money, and there are

Michigan’s child welfare history


More than a decade ago, Lizbeth families find day care, job training and
Schorr published her second landmark book housing aid, and get whatever special
about social welfare. Her first, Within Our educational help the children may require.
Reach,100 debunked the myth that when it They teach practical skills and help with
comes to solving tough social problems financial problems. They even do windows.
“nothing works.” The second, Common
Purpose,101 explained how to take pilot suc-
cesses to scale.
An entire section of one chapter was “IFPS programs that
headed “Michigan’s Statewide Move adhere closely to the
Beyond Bureaucracy to Protect Children.” Homebuilders model
There, Schorr told the story of the
program that first made Michigan a con- significantly reduce out-of-
tender for leadership in child welfare; the home placements and
state’s Intensive Family Preservation Ser- subsequent abuse and
vices program, called Families First.
Families First was not the first pro- neglect.” [Emphasis added].
gram of its kind, (the first was Homebuilders --Washington State Institute
in Washington State) but it is among the for Public Policy
largest and most successful. It’s also among
the most rigorously evaluated programs an-
ywhere in child welfare. Schorr tells the story of a mother
A number of features distinguish true who greets a Homebuilders worker at the
IFPS programs like Families First, and they door by saying “If there’s one thing I don’t
are discussed in detail in Issue Papers 10 and need, it’s another social worker telling me
11 at www.nccpr.org. what to do.” What she needed, she declared,
But among the most important: was to get her house cleaned up. To which
Families First workers combine counseling the Homebuilders worker replied, in es-
and parent education with a strong emphasis sence: “Should we start with the kitchen?”102
on providing "hard" services to ameliorate A photo in a publication commemo-
the worst aspects of poverty. rating the tenth anniversary of Families First
Family preservation workers help shows Families First workers learning to
CYCLE OF FAILURE/42

patch holes in drywall and fix wiring.103 likely to be placed in foster care as the
By providing the concrete help a Families First children.104
family needs, family preservation workers In another Michigan study, judges
set themselves apart from many of the actually gave permission to researchers to
"helping" professionals parents must deal “take back” some children they had just
with. They have offered a helping hand ordered into foster care and place them in
instead of a wagging finger. And they have Families First instead. So we know that
proven they can deliver. Where everything 100 percent of these children would have
had seemed hopeless, the Families First been placed in foster care. One year later,
worker has provided hope. That makes after being diverted to Families First, 93
parents more receptive to the worker's ideas percent of these children still were in their
for how the parents can do their part to make own homes.105
the family succeed. Last year, the Washington State
Institute for Public Policy reviewed 28
different child welfare programs, to see if
they met the test of being “evidence-based”
Events in the mid-1990s successes. IFPS was one of the few to pass –
would plunge Michigan from a as long as the programs followed the
contender for child welfare Homebuilders model. According to this
review:
leadership into the child
IFPS programs that adhere closely
welfare dark ages; they would to the Homebuilders model significantly re-
poison the well for reform for duce out-of-home placements and subse-
more than a decade and quent abuse and neglect. We estimate that
such programs produce $2.54 of benefits for
destroy the lives of thousands each dollar of cost.106 [Emphasis added].
of children. The state still And Michigan’s State Auditor
hasn’t recovered. concluded that the Families First program
has generally been effective in providing a
safe alternative to the out-of-home
Schorr’s book describes how Michi- placement of children who are at imminent
gan leaders studied the original Homebuild- risk of being removed from the home … The
ers program and how they built in rigorous program places a high priority on the safety
safeguards to make sure that, as Families of children.
First expanded, it adhered to the Home-
builders model. The state auditor also found that
The Michigan program began in Families First could serve an entire family
1988. Since then, it has served more than for just over one-third the cost of placing
142,000 children with an outstanding track one child in foster care – and less than one-
record for safety. tenth the cost of placing one child in an
In one evaluation, children who re- institution. 107
ceived Families First services were com- So it’s no wonder that Schorr singled
pared to a "control group" that did not. Af- out the program, and Michigan’s leadership,
ter one year, among children who were re- in her book.
ferred because of abuse or neglect, the con- Unfortunately, by the time Schorr’s
trol group children were nearly twice as book was published, in 1997, that part of the
CYCLE OF FAILURE/43

book was out of date. Not because Families Vast Family Preservation Conspiracy.
First wasn’t working – it was, and it still is. To understand the mentality, and the
But because by then, few political leaders in damage it did, some history is essential.
Michigan cared. Nationwide, by 1979, for reasons
Families First was under sustained related largely to financial incentives that
attack – it was being marginalized. That encouraged foster care, there were more
tenth anniversary publication actually was than half a million children trapped in foster
released two years late – with no public care on any given day110 – about the same
fanfare. Few people even know it exists, raw number as now but, of course, as a
and it’s still not on the DHS website. proportion of the total child population, it
Families First still hasn’t recovered. was even worse.
Funded at $23 million per year in 1995108 – Everything we know about today
even then, a small fraction of what was was happening then: Children were taken
spent on foster care - its funding has been needlessly when poverty was confused with
cut repeatedly, to under $17 million now.109 neglect, they would endure the trauma of
And, as noted earlier, Michigan’s own multiple placement, bouncing from home to
contribution has been cut to zero. Every home, emerging years later unable to love or
penny spent on Families First is, in effect, trust anyone. And, at the same time,
taken out of the pockets of poor people overwhelmed child welfare agencies were
themselves; it’s TANF surplus money. overlooking children in real danger and
And it wasn’t just Families First. leaving them in dangerous homes.
Events in the mid-1990s would plunge As a result, in one of the last acts of
Michigan from a contender for child welfare the Carter Administration, Congress passed
leadership into the child welfare dark ages; the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare
they would poison the well for reform for Act of 1980. The Act doesn’t even use the
more than a decade and destroy the lives of words “family preservation” – that term,
thousands of children. The state still hasn’t invented to apply specifically to programs
recovered. like Homebuilders, was barely known then.
What happened? One word: Binsfeld. The law’s goal was to promote
permanence – in all directions. It was the
The Binsfeld Betrayal first law to provide federal aid for adoption
It is not clear if former Michigan Lt. subsidies and the first to try to set time
Gov. Connie Binsfeld actually knew she was limits on how long children could stay in
spouting palpable nonsense for all those foster care.
years, or whether she simply was willfully And that made sense. Some children
blind to any fact that might interfere with truly can’t return to their parents. For many
her jihad against impoverished families. of these children, adoption is, sometimes
Either way, the results were equally literally, a lifesaver. It is a vitally-important
tragic. part of any child welfare system, and a
People speak of the “Binsfeld laws” crucial means of achieving permanence for
and the “Binsfeld Commission” (in fact children. The problem comes when it is
there were two) but the real damage done by viewed as the only way to achieve such
the former lieutenant governor and her permanence.
cronies can best be described as the Binsfeld The authors of the 1980 law
mentality - embedding in the minds of understood this. That’s why, in addition to
political leaders and the public a series of encouraging adoption, this law also was the
myths that can best be summed up as the one that first required states to make
CYCLE OF FAILURE/44

“reasonable efforts” to keep families But by then the Reagan Administra-


together and to reunite families when it was tion was in office. They hated the law be-
safe to do so. cause it was seen as unnecessary federal in-
terference in state and local decisions. They
pulled back proposed regulations to enforce
it.113 That sent a signal to the states: You
Some children truly can’t can go back to business as usual. Since the
return to their parents. financial incentives were never changed,
For many of these children, business as usual - placing more and more
children in foster care - was the easier
adoption is, sometimes course of action.
literally, a lifesaver. It is a So beginning in the mid-1980s, once
vitally-important part of any again children were taken from homes that
are safe or could be made safe with the right
child welfare system, and a kind of services. Once taken, the children
crucial means of achieving are filed away and forgotten as over-
permanence for children. whelmed workers rush on to the next case.
The "reasonable efforts" requirement is ig-
The problem comes when nored. Children again languish in foster
it is viewed as the only way care, not because of "reasonable efforts" but
to achieve such permanence. because of the lack of reasonable efforts.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, the foster care
population began to rise again. The increase
didn’t stop until 1999.
Both legislative history and guidance Then, in 1993, even though entries
from the federal Department of Health and into foster care were steadily increasing,
Human Services make clear that "reasonable something happened that kicked the child
efforts" are never to be made if it would welfare establishment backlash against fami-
mean a child has to stay in or return to a ly preservation into high gear: Precisely be-
dangerous home.111 But the law does have cause so many more children still were be-
one crucial flaw: It does nothing to change ing taken away, Congress began talking
the way child welfare services are financed. about putting a little more money into fami-
As is discussed in detail later in this ly preservation. Not by doing anything as
report, foster care reimbursement remains an radical as curbing the huge open-ended en-
open-ended federal entitlement for states titlement for foster care. Congress merely
and localities – for every eligible child, at threw a small additional amount into various
least half the cost of holding the child in fos- prevention programs by passing the Family
ter care is reimbursed (in Michigan it’s 60 Preservation and Support Act (now the Pro-
cents on the dollar).112 Far less is available moting Safe and Stable Families Act).
to prevent foster care, and those funds are The actual amount of money in-
"capped." Nevertheless, at first, the law volved was small. But even the prospect of
worked. In the early 1980s, it helped cut the targeting some federal money specifically
foster care population by more than half - to toward family preservation scared a child
243,000. welfare establishment that is invested - liter-
ally and figuratively -- in foster care.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/45

Reality check
HOW THE SYSTEM REALLY WORKS
With the entire process shrouded in secrecy, DHS and private agencies have been
able to weave a cloak of self-serving myth around what the system really does to families –
and how the deck is stacked against them at every turn.
● It begins with the horror stories spread by the likes of former Lt. Gov. Connie Bins-
feld and her disciples. Such horrors really exist, but they are a tiny fraction of the cases
workers see every day, and a tiny proportion of the children taken from their parents.
● Then comes the myth that goes: Caseworkers can’t take away children on their own,
a judge has to approve everything they do.
Perhaps. But often, only after the caseworkers do it.
The problem actually begins with the way reports alleging child maltreatment are han-
dled.

Bottom line: DHS has a free shot at almost any child in the state
for two weeks. They can take who they want, when they want, for what-
ever reason they want.

Unlike most states, in Michigan, each county runs its own child abuse “hotline.”
Statewide, counties vary enormously in what proportion of calls are investigated.
Although standards for accepting a report are minimal, so many reports are so absurd
that, nationwide, at least 38 percent are not passed on for investigation,114 sparing children
the trauma of needless interrogations and stripsearches and allowing workers to concentrate
on more serious cases. The statewide average in Michigan is about the same.115
In addition, a huge proportion of the cases that are investigated turn out to be un-
founded. That indicates that the proportion screened out at the hotline should, in fact, be
higher. But a comprehensive study of racial bias in Michigan child welfare found that Wayne
County accepts for investigation “almost all” referrals, including many reports that either
should not be acted upon at all or should lead to provision of help for a family instead of a
child abuse investigation. According to the report:
This is the beginning of the child protection system’s compounding, intrusive and
sometimes negative interventions with African American children and families.116
Unfortunately, though the consent decree between DHS and CR calls for creating a
single statewide hotline, it does not demand creation of a rational method of screening calls
to that hotline.117
Next, it is up to an often-underprepared, undertrained, inexperienced, overwhelmed
caseworker to decide if the report is to be “substantiated.” In Michigan, a worker need mere-
ly suspect that abuse is slightly more likely than not to substantiate a case.
That is typical. So it is no wonder that a major national study found that caseworkers
were two to six times more likely to wrongly label innocent families as child abusers than
they were to wrongly let guilty families off the hook.118
Then, that same often-underprepared, overwhelmed caseworker can order the remov-
al of a child from the child’s parents – on the spot, entirely on her or his own authority. And
in Michigan, it probably happens in at least 25 percent of all cases that wind up in court.119 In
other cases, the worker technically goes to a judge – but she, or a lawyer acting for DHS,
CYCLE OF FAILURE/46

goes alone, the birth parent is not there to defend herself. Judges almost never refuse such
requests.
There is supposed to be a hearing within 24 hours, where DHS is supposed to justify
keeping the child in foster care. But the standard of proof is not “beyond a reasonable
doubt” as in a criminal case, or even “clear and convincing” the middle standard of proof. At
the first hearing, the agency need not even offer a “preponderance of the evidence” – normal-
ly the lowest standard used in a court of law. DHS need merely satisfy a judge that there is
“probable cause” to hold the child in foster care.
And in reality, DHS doesn’t even have to do that.
Because in most cases, only DHS really presents a case at all.
That’s because DHS almost always has a lawyer present who’s had 24 hours to pre-
pare that case – at a minimum, the caseworker is there to give DHS’ version of events.
On the other side is almost always an impoverished, overwhelmed birth parent who, if
she has a lawyer at all, met him five minutes before the hearing. And, at least half the time,
the lawyer isn’t assigned until after the hearing, sometimes weeks after.120

“Since the burden is on the parents to comply with the service


plan, I don’t have much to do.”
--Attorney for parents

So parents have no way to challenge the removal – and a comprehensive study of


Michigan courts found they almost never do. In one jurisdiction, the hearing is waived at
least 95 to 99 percent of the time.121
But the first hearing is, in fact, the most important. In child welfare, possession is at
least nine-tenths of the law. As professor Paul Chill, Associate Dean of the University of Con-
necticut Law School, and a member of the NCCPR Board of Directors, has written:
Once a child is removed, a variety of factors converge to make it very difficult for par-
ents to ever get the child back. One court has referred to this as the "snowball effect." The
very focus of court proceedings changes--from whether the child should be removed to
whether he or she should be returned. As a practical matter, the parents must now demon-
strate their fitness to have the child reunited with them, rather than the state having to dem-
onstrate the need for out-of-home placement. By seizing physical control of the child, the
state tilts the very playing field of the litigation. The burden of proof shifts, in effect, if not in
law, from the state to the parents.122
The next hearing isn’t for two weeks.
And presiding over all this is a judge who knows that if he overrules DHS and sends a
child home, and then something goes wrong, his career may well be over. But if he rubber-
stamps the removal of hundreds of children, the children may suffer terribly – but the judge is
safe.
Bottom line: DHS has a free shot at almost any child in the state for two weeks. They
can take who they want, when they want, for whatever reason they want.
● And things don’t get much better for families later. Just ask people in the system
and see what they say when given the chance to fill out anonymous surveys. These are
some of the findings, based on such surveys and extensive interviews, from a report com-
missioned by the Michigan Supreme Court as part of its state Court Improvement Program
(CIP):
--Of the judges and referees surveyed, only 37 percent believed that parents’ lawyers
even bothered to speak to their clients before the day of the hearing “most of the time.”
CYCLE OF FAILURE/47

According to the study:


Attorneys in [one] court reported that it was not possible to meet with clients
in their offices, since they were not compensated for the time. … [M]ost often they talk to
their clients in the lobby or outside the courthouse just before the hearing.
--In Wayne County, it’s worse. There, the study says, each judge creates her or his
own list of favored attorneys – which provides an extra incentive to stay on the judge’s good
side and not rock the boat. And, given the low pay for the work, the lawyers need lots and
lots of cases.

“Often the prosecutors are more mindful of the rights of the par-
ents than the defense attorneys. … It bothers me that a defense attorney
in a TPR [termination of parental rights] hearing might never call a wit-
ness.”
--Prosecutor

One person observed that parents’ attorneys in Wayne County meet in the
cafeteria and “deal the morning’s cases like cards.” … One jurist with a long history with the
Wayne Court described some of these attorneys as “greedy,” saying they get assigned to
many more cases than they can realistically handle. … One interviewee estimated that some
attorneys have as many as 200-300 cases, and that they seem to rely on the prosecutor to
present the case.
And in many counties, even lawyers who are not greedy can’t provide even minimally
adequate advocacy and still make a living. In some counties, there are points in the process
where, if a lawyer spent even one hour a week on a case, his flat fee would average out to
four dollars an hour.123
Even prosecutors sometimes are appalled. Said one:
Often the prosecutors are more mindful of the rights of the parents than the defense
attorneys. … It bothers me that a defense attorney in a TPR [termination of parental rights]
hearing might never call a witness.
But some of the most damning comments come from the defense lawyers themselves
– about their own work:
An attorney in [one] court described case preparation as being “training and learning
the law,” as opposed to spending time with the client. … An attorney in yet another court de-
scribed his preparation for adjudicatory hearings in this way: “I study the information that the
prosecutor and DHS have—their files are completely open to me. I don’t need to do any addi-
tional investigation.”
And what happens once that hearing is over, and parents have to jump through one
hoop after another thrown at them by DHS? Does that parent have an advocate fighting for a
good service plan and making sure services are provided? Or does she have a lawyer like
the one who said that by this point: “Since the burden is on the parents to comply with the
service plan, I don’t have much to do.”
Although Binsfeld sought to portray the minimal requirement in federal law that states
make “reasonable efforts” to keep families together when it is safe to do so as some kind of
statutory bogeyman, terrifying the entire system into leaving children in dangerous homes, in
fact, judges routinely rubber-stamp DHS claims that those efforts were made – and parents’
CYCLE OF FAILURE/48

lawyers rarely even challenge those assertions.124


As for the lawyer guardians ad litem, (LGALs) who are supposed to investigate inde-
pendently and then advocate for what they think is in the child’s best interests (regardless of
whether it’s what the child wants) it is so taken for granted that they rubber-stamp DHS, that,
in some counties, when a prosecutor isn’t available the LGALs’ “will often function as the de
facto prosecutor…”
● The skids are greased for termination of parental rights at every stage, with hearings
sometimes just a formality. According to the CIP study:

Even a chief prosecutor noted that once cases get into the system, many parents do
not have a chance to keep up with onerous service requirements, with the result that they
lose their children. … Another attorney said that terminations move swiftly in her jurisdiction
because the judge has handled the case up to that point, knows all the issues, and likely has
made up his or her mind.” [Emphasis added].

That bias combines with provisions of Michigan law to create a mix that is toxic to
families.
In theory, at the termination stage, the burden of proof finally rises to “clear and con-
vincing.” The U.S. Supreme Court, in fact, requires it. But Michigan gets around that by in-
cluding 28 separate grounds for termination, some of them breathtakingly broad, including a
catch-all category, which allows the state to take away a child forever if

“Other conditions exist that cause the child to come within the court’s jurisdiction, the
parent received recommendations to rectify those conditions, the conditions have not been
rectified by the parent after the parent has received notice and a hearing and has been given
a reasonable opportunity to rectify the conditions, and there is no reasonable likelihood that
the conditions will be rectified within a reasonable time considering the child’s age.”125

And if a parent has lost custody of a child forever that way once, in Michigan, the
chances are excellent that it will happen again and again.
Because another provision of the so-called Binsfeld laws doesn’t just allow, but re-
quires the State of Michigan to immediately go to court and seek termination of parental
rights on any future children if DHS thinks there is “risk of harm to the child.” This applies
even if the parent voluntarily surrendered rights to a child.126
So if a teenage mother decides she’s not ready to raise the child to whom she’s given
birth, and surrenders the child to adoption, then a decade or more later gets married, is lead-
ing a stable life and gives birth to another child – DHS will be watching, waiting, and may well
confiscate the child at birth.
Even if the court ultimately denies the petition, until the court makes up its mind, the
newborn will endure needless foster care at a time when it is likely to be most damaging.
Furthermore, though it is no longer required, courts in Michigan still have the right to
suspend all visits between parent and child as soon as a termination petition is filed. So
even if the courts ultimately decide the removal was a mistake, DHS can simply come back
and say: “But now the infant has ‘bonded’ with the foster parent, so we want to terminate pa-
rental rights anyway.”
But wouldn’t the child be protected from being torn needlessly from his parent by the
provision requiring DHS to think there is “risk of harm to the child”?
No. According to the CIP report, DHS, apparently still plagued by the Binsfeld mental-
ity, routinely files such petitions “even when the agency does not believe that termination of
parental rights is best for the child.”127 In other cases, workers actually are unaware of the
fact that they don’t have to file these petitions in every case.128
No wonder Michigan has so many legal orphans.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/49

So, suddenly, any death of any child 1979? Nobody ever asked them; it was eas-
"known to the system" was blamed on "fam- ier just to scapegoat family preservation.
ily preservation" and on that federal re- It served the interests of everyone –
quirement to make “reasonable efforts” to except the children. News media had a sim-
keep families together - even if the child was ple explanation for seemingly inexplicable
nowhere near a real family preservation pro- tragedies; politicians had a means of what’s
gram - and even when it was a family pre- been called “low cost rectitude” – you can
servation worker who warned that the child campaign to tear apart more families and the
was in danger in the first place. bill won’t come due for a few years, and
even then the federal government will pick
up a large share of the tab.
And it was a great “out” for embat-
Connie Binsfeld, tled child welfare agency leaders. Faced
lieutenant governor of with a child who died in a case where there
Michigan, didn’t create this were flagrantly obvious warning signs,
agency chiefs could tell the truth: “My ca-
climate of fear and hatred – seworkers are undertrained, overwhelmed,
but she sure knew how and don’t have time to investigate any case
to exploit it. properly, so they overlook the obvious.” Or
they could say “Well, it’s not our fault, that
federal law made us do it.”
And it was all happening at a time
And then it got worse. The debate when hostility to the poor, particularly poor,
took an Orwellian turn. Opponents began Black mothers, may have been at its highest
spreading the Big Lie of American child point in decades. By January, 1995, Newt
welfare. They charged that children were Gingrich, newly-elected Speaker of the
languishing in foster care because the Vast House, had proposed taking away poor
Family Preservation Conspiracy was forcing people’s children and throwing them into
caseworkers to lavish services on ne’er-do- orphanages. The next year, members of
well parents, giving them chance after Congress would call these mothers “wolves”
chance while their children were forced to and “animals” as they passed the welfare
wait, bouncing from foster home to foster “reform” law.
home. To paraphrase one of America’s
Thus, the foster care-industrial com- greatest journalists, Edward R. Murrow,
plex, which lives on endless per diem pay- Connie Binsfeld, lieutenant governor of
ments for holding children in foster care in- Michigan, didn’t create this climate of fear
definitely said, in effect: Hey, it’s not our and hatred – but she sure knew how to ex-
fault. We’d love to stop being paid for all ploit it.
these children, but that darn family preserva- Not long after her second commis-
tion movement is tying our hands – and sion issued its report, Binsfeld was invited to
forcing us to hold the children in foster care. testify before Congress.
None of it was true. The 2,400 words of fear and smear
For starters, if the Vast Family Pre- she offered up are in some ways a classic –
servation Conspiracy was using a 1980 law an almost perfect summary of the campaign
to hold all these children in foster care, how of hate and misinformation that characte-
did people like Binsfeld and her allies ex- rized the era. She painted a picture of state
plain all the children trapped in foster care in officials terrified to take away children who
CYCLE OF FAILURE/50

had been beaten, raped, and tortured, for fear ment Project report, and the reports from the
of running afoul of the “reasonable efforts” consultants hired by CR, not to mention the
requirement.129 cases in this report, and the success of other
And don’t worry about legal or- states which voluntarily work to keep fami-
phans, Binsfeld said. Once the Vast Family lies together, all make clear that the real
Preservation Conspiracy was out of the way, problem in Michigan isn’t making reasona-
every child in foster care either would be re- ble efforts, it’s the failure to make reasona-
turned home – if authorities were absolutely, ble efforts.
positively sure the birth parents had become
model citizens – or they’d be adopted.
“There is a placement of choice for every
child,” she told the committee. Horror story cases are
Once again, none of it was true. like needles in a haystack.
The real problem with reasonable ef- Binsfeld’s approach was to try
forts is that the requirement is routinely ig-
nored, and always has been. Even Marcia to find the needles by
Lowry, executive director of CR - a group vacuuming up the entire
that brought a lawsuit that, in its original haystack. That’s impossible.
form, would have enhanced the power of
Michigan’s private agencies, a group that In contrast, states that
launched an attack on the state’s grandpa- emphasize family
rents, in short, a group that is no friend of preservation and keep more
family preservation – even Marcia Lowry
knew that was nonsense. children safely in their own
In 1988, the very time opponents of homes give workers more
family preservation claim was the heyday of time to find the needles.
reasonable efforts, Lowry testified at another
Congressional hearing about the Adoption
Assistance and Child Welfare Act.
Citing a case in which a child had More than a decade after Binsfeld
been taken from his mother and separated got the laws she wanted, six years after the
for five years – because the mother lacked executive director of the Binsfeld Commis-
housing, Lowry said: sion was named to run DHS (and five years
after she left) and with the Binsfeld mentali-
These are children who are supposed ty still permeating DHS, the horror stories of
to be protected by this very fine legislation. children who are, in fact, brutalized by their
But reasonable efforts were not made in this parents remain rare – but they have not
case or in thousands of cases. … We are try- stopped. There is no evidence they have
ing to enforce this law in the Federal courts even abated. Binsfeld and her disciples
because the Congress and the Department of share responsibility for that.
Health and Human Services are not. 130 Because the real reason such cases
Four years later, and four years be- sometimes are missed – even when agencies
fore Binsfeld made her claims, the U.S. Su- receive repeated warnings – has nothing to
preme Court would prohibit such lawsuits, do with family preservation or reasonable
131
rendering what little was left of the “rea- efforts. Rather, one almost always finds a
sonable efforts” clause largely meaningless. caseworker who is underprepared, under-
The data from the Court Improve- trained and desperately overwhelmed. She
CYCLE OF FAILURE/51

never had time to check files carefully, or road before.


stay long enough at the home or interview Recall how the Adoption Assistance
everyone she should have. Or the case that and Child Welfare Act of 1980 was sup-
didn’t look urgent went it first came in, and posed to promote permanence in all direc-
so went to the bottom of the pile, turned out tions. It turns out the direction embraced
to be extremely urgent after all. most fervently was not family preservation –
it was rushing to terminate parental rights.
In the spring of 1995, - plenty of
time for Binsfeld to have read it – Family
Binsfeld convinced Law Quarterly published a landmark study
herself that an army of child- by Martin Guggenheim, Fiorello LaGuardia
less yuppies was desperate to professor of clinical law at New York Uni-
versity School of Law (and president of
adopt Michigan foster child- NCCPR).
ren, with only the Vast Family Guggenheim studied two states, New
Preservation Conspiracy York – and Michigan. He found that after
the Adoption Assistance Act took effect,
standing in their way. particularly starting in the late 1980s, there
So Michigan went about was a huge surge in terminations of parental
repeating the same mistakes. rights in the two states – and that surge far
outran adoptions.
It would be nearly a decade The result, dramatically documented
before anyone had the guts to in a line graph: an ever increasing number of
expose the dreadful results. state wards – the number soared from 1,700
in 1987 to more than 3,000 by 1992. Many
would never find homes. It was in this ar-
ticle that Guggenheim first coined a name
It can be frustrating for something so for these children – legal orphans.
mundane to lead to such profound tragedy. “A well-intentioned desire to serve
And it can be hard to fix. It’s so much easi- the best interests of children appears to have
er for all concerned to simply blame a law or resulted in needless destruction of families
a policy. without providing any offsetting gains,”
Horror story cases are like needles in Guggenheim wrote.132
a haystack. Binsfeld’s approach was to try But Binsfeld convinced herself that
to find the needles by vacuuming up the en- an army of childless yuppies was desperate
tire haystack. That’s impossible. In con- to adopt Michigan foster children, with only
trast, states that emphasize family preserva- the Vast Family Preservation Conspiracy
tion and keep more children safely in their standing in their way.
own homes give workers more time to find So Michigan went about repeating
the needles. the same mistakes. It would be nearly a
As for the suggestion that “there is a decade before anyone had the guts to expose
placement of choice for every child,” per- the dreadful results.
haps Binsfeld believed her own mythology. ● The Binsfeld laws expanded the
But she, and everyone else who has pursued grounds for termination of parental rights,
adoption-as-panacea had every reason to including adding an astoundingly vague
know it wasn’t true. catch-all category that boils down to: any
Because Michigan had traveled that other reason we can think of. (See Reality
CYCLE OF FAILURE/52

Michigan’s “express lane” to indefinite foster care


As has been shown elsewhere in this report, if DHS wants to take your child (and if
you’re poor) DHS can do it, and nothing gets in the way. But what if DHS doesn’t want to take
the time even to go through all the formalities?
If you happen to be in a custody dispute, or simply have an ex who sincerely believes
you’re not a very good parent, DHS gets a chance to take the “express lane.”
And it’s a privilege that appears to have been granted to the child welfare agency only
in Michigan.
In most states, in cases where there are two parents living apart, it is, unfortunately,
common that, after a child is taken from the custodial parent, the non-custodial parent is
treated as a suspect instead of a resource.
There are exceptions. In California, for example, in such circumstances, if a non-
custodial parent wants custody she or he is presumed fit, and the state must prove otherwise
by clear and convincing evidence.133 But in most states it’s pretty much the other way
around. The non-custodial parent may spend months or years jumping through hoops while
the child languishes in foster care with strangers.
But Michigan has taken things to a Kafkaesque extreme.
In Michigan, if a non-custodial parent admits to neglect, the custodial parent loses the
right to a trial. The parent who actually is raising the child can be presumed neglectful and
forced to comply with a DHS “service plan” while the child remains trapped in foster care.
This goes on until the court is satisfied the custodial parent can raise the child – even though
no court ever found the parent couldn’t raise the child in the first place.
Michigan’s Court of Appeals has upheld this practice at least nine times, and the
Michigan Supreme Court has refused to hear the issue.
The result, say lawyers for one mother who fell into this trap, is
a culture within Michigan courts where a finding of neglect against one parent automatically
deprives the other of an evidentiary hearing…The pervasiveness of this practice heightens
the risk that children in Michigan either have been or will be erroneously removed from fit,
custodial parents.134
What kind of harm can this do?
A disgruntled ex-husband could enter into a no-contest plea to neglect solely to en-
sure that his ex-wife would lose custody of her children. A domestic violence batterer could
admit to neglecting his children as a means of exercising power over the mother, who could
lose custody of the children based on his plea. An uninvolved incarcerated parent could sti-
pulate to neglect as form of retribution against the mother for her involvement in his criminal
conviction.135
And what grounds might a parent have to cop to neglect if he doesn’t even have cus-
tody? Simple. He pleads to “failure to protect” the children from whatever it is he claims the
other parent has done.
That’s what the husband did in the case that has gotten the most attention. In a fur-
ther illustration of the absurdity of Michigan case law, he was able to deprive the mother of a
hearing concerning two of her three children. But she got her trial concerning the third child
– when it was revealed that the man was not that child’s father after all.
The mother lost, and her parental rights were terminated.136 Maybe that’s what should
have happened, maybe not. But children are placed at enormous risk when it can happen af-
ter bypassing a trial on the merits and taking the express lane all the way to the termination
of parental rights hearing.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/53

Check, p. 45). This was the legal ground Poor people often don’t have cars
used the first time Judge Gardner terminated and have enormous difficulty getting to the
Melissa Kucharski’s parental rights. (See suburbs where many foster children are
Comparison shopping in Grand Rapids, P. placed – especially when visits are sche-
28) duled during working hours and the birth
● The Binsfeld laws said that once parents also must keep their jobs to get their
this or any other so-called ground for termi- children back.
nation was “proven” courts must presume
that termination is in a child’s best interests
and the parent must prove otherwise.
● The Binsfeld laws require the state But more important than
to seek termination of parental rights after a the Binsfeld laws was the
year – with fewer and narrower exceptions
than similar federal law. According to Ken- Binsfeld mentality – it was
neth Tacoma, Chief Probate Judge for Wex- open season on poor families,
ford County, “this forces many cases into a especially poor Black families.
termination mode even if other options …
might be available for consideration.”137
● And the Binsfeld laws said that if a
mother lost one child to termination – even But in 2000, a Traverse City foster
if she voluntarily surrendered that child, parent made clear she didn’t give a damn.
every time that mother gave birth, forever, She said DHS needs to “not pamper the par-
the presumption would be that the state of ents’ requests so much” by doing things like
Michigan immediately would petition to moving visits to places that are easier for
terminate parental rights for that child as parents to reach.
well. (Technically, the law also applied to The local lawyer guardian ad litem,
fathers, but, of course, that is harder to en- who represents children in these cases, sug-
force.) gested to the local paper that parents should
But more important than the Binsfeld view having their children taken as almost
laws was the Binsfeld mentality – it was like a vacation, a chance to, as the paper put
open season on poor families, especially it,
poor Black families. straighten out their own lives without
Statewide, in the two years after the the pressure of caring for children as well.
Binsfeld laws passed, the laws that were “Try not to look at it as the state trying to
supposed to empty out foster care actually intervene in your family,” she said. “The
caused the number of children trapped in problems seem to arise when parents see it
foster care to soar by more than 15 per- as an invasion.”
cent.138 At least since 1993, which is as far
back as available records go, there has been As for the head of the local DHS of-
nothing like this “Binsfeld binge” before or fice, Bob Porter, his only concern was that
since. the Binsfeld laws didn’t go far enough.
And in parts of the state, where the Why wait 12 months before demand-
war was waged with particular gusto, it was ing termination in almost every case – why
worse, as people who once might have hid- not make it six! He said he wouldn’t want
den the fact that they thought of poor parents his children waiting longer “while I decided
as indolent and uncaring came out into the whether I wanted to be a parent or not.”139
open. Apparently, Porter hadn’t noticed
CYCLE OF FAILURE/54

that in his region, from the passage of the should adoption or guardianship – prefera-
Binsfeld laws to 2000, while adoptions had bly by a relative - be the next choice.
increased by ten percent, terminations of pa- Almost everyone at least pays lip
rental rights had shot up 49 percent. And service to that.
the number of area children trapped in foster But one of Justice Corrigan’s first
care on any given day had increased by one- acts when she was Chief Justice was to
third.140 create a task force not on permanence, but
And it doesn’t look like things have on adoption. And there would be much
gotten any better. In 2008, Grand Traverse more.
County took away children at the third high- There are two ways to know the real
est rate in the entire state, a rate more than priorities of a child welfare system - or a
double the state average and nearly court system. One, of course is how it
quadruple the rate in Wayne County.141 spends money. And we’ve already seen that
no matter what DHS or anyone else may say
Adoption-at-all-costs about foster care being a last resort, the big
And no wonder. The push for adop- bucks are going into foster care, not alterna-
tion-at-all-costs didn’t end with Binsfeld. It tives.
was carried on by Michigan Supreme Court Another way to know anyone’s
Justice Maura Corrigan. priorities is by looking at what one chooses
As Chief Justice, she turned the court to celebrate. The father who has memorized
into a crusader for adoption. In the process, the schedule of his favorite football team but
she undercut one of the most noble concepts always forgets his children's birthdays is
in all of child welfare – permanence. sending a message. So, too, is the child wel-
The major reason foster care is so fare agency which claims that its first priori-
inherently harmful is the separation of a ty when a child is taken away is to reunify
child from everyone she or he knows and that child with her or his birth parents, but
loves. Sometimes that separation must take chooses to celebrate only adoption.
place anyway, because leaving the child in The real agenda of most child wel-
the home is even more harmful. But often fare systems, and most of the people in
the separation is unnecessary. them, is made apparent every year on Na-
The trauma is compounded, howev- tional Adoption Day, or, as it should proper-
er, by impermanence. The moment a child ly be called, National Child Welfare Hypo-
finally gets used to new, substitute parents, crisy Day.
new friends, a new school, he may be Everybody knows the drill. Open
uprooted again. Do that to a child often the court on a weekend, bring in cake and
enough, and a child learns not to love or balloons, finalize foster-child adoptions en
trust anyone. masse – in the process, reinforcing every
So permanence is, indeed, one of the pernicious stereotype about how the system
most important goals in child welfare. But supposedly rescues children from horrible
the best form of permanence is avoiding tak- birth parents and places them with vastly
ing a child away from his parents in the first superior adoptive parents.
place. Second best is reunifying that child In Michigan, Justice Corrigan takes
with the permanent parents he was born great pride in orchestrating more such cele-
with. Only when that’s truly not possible
CYCLE OF FAILURE/55

1995: 2005: It was a totally unrealistic as-


Five years of aggressively ter- sumption to believe that the supply
minating parents rights has produced of adoptive families could absorb the
a clear pattern: The number of child- numbers of new wards available for
ren freed for adoption goes up every adoption … In spite of tax incentives,
year; the number of children adopted adoption subsides, promotion pro-
fails to keep pace with the number of grams, post-adoption support servic-
adoption-eligible children; and the to- es and other tools to try to place
tal number of orphaned children not these children, the numbers show
adopted, continues to increase fast- that it won’t be done, and our group
est of all. of state-created orphans will contin-
Of all the reforms advocated in ue to grow. ….
the 1970s, it appears that the one Unfortunately, as things stand
taken the most seriously is terminat- now, we are witnessing one of the
ing parents’ rights of children in fos- great ironies in the legislative world
ter care. … of good intentions gone bad. The
A well-intentioned desire to number of rootless and alienated
serve the best interests of children permanent state wards has exploded,
appears to have resulted in needless and these children and young people
destruction of families without pro- are still caught in the foster care sys-
viding any offsetting gains. tem from which they were to be res-
cued. We have made things worse,
--Prof. Martin Guggenheim not better.
--Michigan Probate Court
Judge Kenneth Tacoma

brations than any other state. The Michigan welfare agency can get good press, since the
Supreme Court website is slathered in sto- agency can count on most reporters not ask-
ries about adoption day, speeches touting ing any tough questions about how it was
adoption and other material promoting adop- done, or whether all those children ever
tion, with barely a word about any other needed to be taken from their homes.
form of permanence.142 To top it off, there’s big money at
In theory it is possible for one or stake. The federal version of the Binsfeld
more justices of this court to give a speech laws, the so-called Adoption and Safe Fami-
touting adoption in the morning, preside at lies Act, pays states a bounty for every fina-
an adoption luncheon at noon – and hear an lized adoption over a baseline number.
appeal of a termination of parental rights The message to the frontlines is
that afternoon. If the reality of justice de- clear: Reunify a family and, if anything goes
pends at least in part on the perception, it is wrong, you’ll be scapegoated and quite pos-
fair to ask if the actions of Justice Corrigan sibly fired. Rush to terminate parental
and her colleagues risk compromising that rights, and you will reap only rewards, no
reality. matter what actually happens to the children.
That’s not all. Getting those adop- So is it any wonder the number of
tion numbers up is the one sure way a child legal orphans in Michigan has shot up? Is it
CYCLE OF FAILURE/56

any wonder that Tim and Lisa Holland’s victed of tying Timothy to a chair, beating
adoption worker would let them finalize him with a paddle, and then burying his
another adoption even after Ricky had gone body under the basement floor. The father
“missing”? The adoption-at-all-costs men- also adopted three other children from the
tality isn’t just harmful to children’s psyches Michigan foster care system before leaving
– it can endanger their lives. the state.144
● In 2006, Alan and Carol Poole be-
came foster parents because they couldn’t
have children and were eager to adopt. Liv-
The message to the ing in what the Detroit News called their
frontlines is clear: Reunify a “upscale 2,700 foot home” it’s no wonder
family and, if anything goes that, as a Wayne County prosecutor put it,
Carol Poole “appeared to be the most perfect
wrong, you’ll be scapegoated of parents on paper…”145
and quite possibly fired. The first foster child placed with the
Rush to terminate parental Pooles was Allison Newman. There wasn’t
time to get to the question of adoption. Ten
rights, and you will reap only months after being placed with the Pooles,
rewards, no matter what ac- Allison was dead. Carole Poole was found
tually happens to the children. guilty of second degree murder.146
In other cases, the children survived,
but only after enduring exactly the kind of
maltreatment the Binsfeld laws supposedly
Abuse by adoptive parents is, in fact, were going to prevent.
very rare – as is abuse by birth parents. But ● In Warren, eight-year-old twins
creating huge incentives to promote adop- testified that their adoptive mother “tortured
tion-at-all-costs makes it less rare. And, them by denying them food, burning them
once again, even Marcia Lowry of CR has with cigarettes, hitting them repeatedly with
acknowledged it. a belt and immersing them in bleach. …”147
In 2003, she told a Congressional The adoptive mother was convicted
committee that of two counts of torture and two counts of
first degree child abuse.148
… Congress should realize that far ● In Grand Rapids, two children
too many states … when they do, for exam- were raped by their adoptive father – only to
ple, raise their adoption numbers, are doing be removed from the home and allegedly
so by including many clearly inadequate sexually assaulted again in foster care.149
families … along with the genuinely commit- As noted earlier, abuse by adoptive
ted, loving families who want to make a parents is rare – as is abuse by birth parents.
home for these children, just to 'succeed' by But there are bigger problems with Michi-
boosting their numbers.143 gan’s adoption-at-all-costs mentality. There
And in Michigan, Ricky Holland was is the risk of adoption disruption, as parents
not the only Michigan child adopted-to- give up on adopted children after agencies
death. rush the children into quick-and-dirty, slip-
● In 2002, after what news accounts shod placements,150 the risk of tearing apart
say was a rushed adoption to allow the fami- families in which children never needed to
ly to move from Michigan to Iowa, the be taken in the first place – and the risk of
adoptive father of Timothy Boss was con- creating all those legal orphans.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/57

Yet Corrigan continues to take ac- ness" - preparing for the Supreme Court's
tions and make statements suggesting she weekly conference at which cases are dis-
views permanence as adoption-only. Her cussed and decided.152
priorities were vividly on display at an all- But Corrigan was back at the Task
day meeting of the Child Welfare Improve- Force that afternoon, in time to chastise a
ment Task Force, of which she is a member, task force committee, harshly and at length,
in Detroit in November, 2008. for putting forward a recommendation that
would require a little more work from the
courts in support of family reunification at a
time when their budget is being cut. The
"… Congress should task force promptly backed down.153
realize that far too many ____________
states … when they do, for Given the fanaticism on the state’s
example, raise their adoption highest court, one can only imagine the cou-
rage it took for a lowly probate court judge
numbers, are doing so by to blow the whistle on the lingering hangov-
including many clearly er from the Binsfeld binge.
inadequate families … along A decade after Guggenheim’s article
was published, Kenneth Tacoma, Chief
with the genuinely committed, Judge of the Wexford County Probate Court,
loving families who want to published Lost and Alone on Some Forgot-
make a home for these ten Highway: ASFA, Binsfeld and the Law of
Unintended Consequences.154
children, just to 'succeed' by In it, he essentially took Guggen-
boosting their numbers." heim’s line graph and extended it a decade.
--Marcia Lowry, The new graph showed that the state ward
executive director of the group population which had gone from 1,700 in
that calls itself “Children’s Rights.” 1985 to more than 3,000 by 1992, had
soared to more than 6,000.155
And these figures don’t even include
Arrangements had been made for the the number of children who aged out of the
one group largely left off the task force itself system without ever being adopted. They
– birth parents – to speak to the group. Plen- don’t include disrupted adoptions either –
ty of tears were shed as more than 20 par- since technically the adoptive parents still
ents whose children had been taken from may have rights to the children, but they’re
them worked up the courage to face what back in the system – often Tacoma wrote,
amounts to the power elite of Michigan the juvenile justice system.
child welfare. Afterwards, several members In response, the legislature made
of the task force said they were deeply some minimal changes, and Corrigan is
moved, and the Free Press ran a story about quick to emphasize she supported them.156
the presentations.151 For instance, once a ground for termination
But Corrigan, who had been present has been “proven,” the burden is no longer
at the meeting earlier and would return later, on the parent to prove that termination is not
was absent during the birth parents’ presen- in the child’s best interests. But the broad,
tation. Her secretary said she had to return to vague grounds for termination remain.
her office to deal with "pressing court busi- More important, so does the fact that, given
CYCLE OF FAILURE/58

the often poor quality and limited resources permanent state wards has exploded, and
of defense counsel, judges at every level these children and young people are still
usually are hearing only one side of the sto- caught in the foster care system from which
ry. they were to be rescued. We have made
And while the changes deal with the things worse, not better.
back door of the system – termination of pa-
By 2008, even Corrigan was admit-
rental rights and adoption - they do nothing
ting that, as the Detroit Free Press put it:
about the front door which was blown open
by the Binsfeld mentality. The Binsfeld laws had a faulty as-
In his 2005 article, Tacoma noted sumption … “I think what we anticipated
that the army of childless yuppies remains was that there would be people to step up to
AWOL. And, echoing Prof. Guggenheim’s the plate to adopt these children or find a
conclusion a decade earlier, Tacoma wrote: permanent solution for them." For whatever
Unfortunately, as things stand now, reason, she said, "that did not occur."157
we are witnessing one of the great ironies in But there was no excuse for ever be-
the legislative world of good intentions gone lieving that it would.
bad. The number of rootless and alienated

Hangover from the Binsfeld binge


The “hangover” from the Binsfeld another tragedy like the death of Ricky Hol-
binge – a suspicion of families that runs so land, every single one of them involved ex-
deep as to border on the irrational – can be panding the net of coercive intervention into
seen in the response by many politicians to families; there was not one suggestion to do
the series of tragedies in Michigan foster more to keep families together.
care in recent years.
Whether it was the case of Timothy The Udow era
Boss, Joshua Causey, Isaac Lethbridge, Alli- The biggest sign that Gov. Jennifer
son Newman, Ricky Holland or Johnny Granholm knew her first choice to run DHS
Dragomir, the cases had one thing in com- – the former executive director of the Bins-
mon: The children were taken away from feld Commission, Nanette Bowler – had
their birth parents and died in the duly- been a huge mistake, was her choice of a re-
licensed homes or institutions of people who placement.
were total strangers to them. Marianne Udow was the first DHS
And yet, overwhelmingly, the pro- leader since Gerald Miller in the early 1990s
posed responses to these tragedies involved to have a keen sense of what was really
taking away more children and placing more wrong with child welfare and what was
of them in stranger care. needed to get it right.
The worst offenders in this regard During Udow’s brief tenure, DHS:
may be Attorney General Mike Cox and a ●Confronted the racism that per-
“special committee” of the Michigan legisla- meates child welfare.
ture formed to investigate child welfare after ●Promoted kinship care.
Ricky Holland died. ●Pushed to expand the Family to
Even though all of the proposals Family initiative statewide.
were offered in the name of preventing ●Sought an innovative waiver of
CYCLE OF FAILURE/59

federal funding rules to allow money nor- not possible, the goal is to place the child
mally restricted to foster care to be used for with a relative. And if that’s not possible
alternatives as well. the goal is to at least keep the child in his
Once again, Michigan could have own neighborhood, to make visiting easier
been a contender. and to keep the child connected to family,
But today, the racism issue is on the teachers, friends, and classmates. Almost
back burner, kinship care is under siege, the everyone pays lip service to these goals.
future of Family to Family is tenuous, and What sets Family to Family apart, and
the waiver is dead. makes it a threat to the foster care-industrial
In part that’s because Udow’s big- complex is, it’s succeeding.
gest weakness was – weakness. She allowed A core strategy of the initiative,
someone in DHS to scrap the waiver at the though by no means the only element, is
last minute – slinking away from a reform Team Decisionmaking. That means, when
the agency already had publicly announced there is a need to consider out-of-home care,
and embraced. And she let herself be bul- everyone who knows the family and cares
lied, most notably by the former District At- about the family is brought together, along
torney in Oakland County whose relentless with the professionals handling the case, to
demands to tear apart more families led to a hammer out a solution. DHS has the final
rate of removal double the rate in Wayne say on what that solution will be. Much
County. more about the program is available on the
But the problem wasn’t just Udow’s Annie E. Casey Foundation’s website at
weakness. All of these initiatives had one http://www.aecf.org/MajorInitiatives/Family
thing in common: They would have wea- %20to%20Family.aspx
kened the power, and threatened the pros- But the most important thing to
perity, of the foster care-industrial complex. know about Family to Family is that, like In-
All of Udow’s initiatives would have re- tensive Family Preservation Services, and
duced the number of children entering foster unlike foster care, it passes the “evidence-
care and, particularly, reduced the number of based” test. There is solid evidence that it
children placed with strangers or in institu- works, from a comprehensive evaluation of
tions. the program done by the University of North
Carolina.158 That evaluation found that
The campaign against “[F]ewer children entered out of home care
Family to Family and those who had to be removed from their
One area where the role of private homes were placed in less restrictive forms
agencies is crystal clear is in efforts to un- of care.”
dercut Family to Family. Because this was Here are some of the other high-
one of those rare times when the mask lights:
slipped, and Michigan’s foster-care, indus- ●While conventional foster parent
trial complex revealed its ugly side. “recruiting campaigns” are failing all over
First, a brief explanation of the in- the country, Family to Family sites often
itiative, developed by the Annie E. Casey succeed in recruiting foster parents in the
Foundation. (That foundation is a longtime children’s own neighborhoods. And instead
funder of NCCPR, though it is not funding of the hostility that often characterizes rela-
our current advocacy in Michigan.) tionships between birth parents and foster
The goals of Family to Family boil parents, many foster parents embraced the
down to this: Keep children with their own Family to Family approach of working with
families when it is safe to do so. If that’s and mentoring birth parents.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/60

The Michigan child welfare brain drain


Michigan has made enormous contributions to reform of child welfare – in other
states. Leaders who may have been frustrated in Michigan have been welcomed elsewhere.
Some cases in point:

David Berns. Former director of the DHS Office of Children's Services. Left Michigan
to run the human services agency in El Paso County, Colorado. Transformed the child wel-
fare system into a national model. Berns turned child protective services into child poverty
services. Staff assigned to child welfare became experts in public assistance and other help
to poor families and vice versa. (Unfortunately, Michigan’s settlement with CR may well make
it harder to do that in Michigan.)159 By recognizing the crucial role of poverty in child mal-
treatment, El Paso County reversed steady increases in its foster care population. The num-
ber of children in foster care declined significantly – and the rate of reabuse of children left in
their own homes fell below the state and national averages, according to an independent
evaluation by the Center for Law and Social Policy.160 Berns now helps systems across the
country as Executive Vice President of Child and Family Services for Casey Family Pro-
grams.

James Beougher, also a former Director of Child and Family Services for DHS. He
pioneered efforts to move to performance-based contracting in Michigan, but it never got
past the pilot stage. But Beougher’s ideas have been welcomed in Maine, where he was
brought in to transform one of the nation’s worst child welfare agencies. On any given day in
2001, a child was more likely to be trapped in foster care in Maine than in almost any other
state. And, since Maine was profoundly hostile to kinship care, the proportion of children
trapped in stranger care may well have been worst in the nation. Now, the number of children
trapped in foster care is down nearly 40 percent.161 Entries into care are way down,162 kinship
care is way up and the number of children trapped in institutions has been cut by nearly two-
thirds.163 It’s all been done without compromising safety, earning the support of the state’s
independent child welfare ombudsman.

The work of Susan Kelly is described elsewhere in this report. Kelly was the first di-
rector of Michigan’s pioneering Families First program. Based on the Homebuilders model in
Washington State, Families First became one of the largest and most successful programs of
its kind – only to be undercut by the politics of Michigan child welfare. Now Kelly advises
systems around the country as Senior Director of Strategic Consulting for Casey Family Pro-
grams.

The next Dave Berns, or Jim Beougher, or Sue Kelly is almost certainly working
somewhere in DHS right now, whether as a frontline caseworker, midlevel administrator, or
perhaps running a county office. Either Michigan policymakers can learn to find these people
and support their innovative thinking – or some other state will.

• With more foster families availa- • At most sites, there was a signifi-
ble, fewer children had to be institutiona- cant reduction in the number of placements
lized. children had to endure.
• Increased use of relatives as foster • Perhaps most significant: Because
parents also opened up a new option for Family to Family succeeded in keeping
permanence, as more relatives agreed to be more children safely in their own homes, the
permanent guardians of children who could children who were removed had more se-
not be reunited with their birth parents. rious problems. Nevertheless, there was no
CYCLE OF FAILURE/61

increase in the “recidivism” rate – the num- And clearly, if you run an institution
ber of children returned home who re-enter that is "situated on 70 acres of beautifully
care – at any Family to Family site. And in wooded land and rolling open spaces"166 you
some sites, the recidivism rate went down. might feel threatened by a program whose
That indicates that all of the other goal is to keep children in the same neigh-
improvements in children’s lives were ac- borhoods as their birth families.
complished while making children safer. The Methodist Home website and
There also is evidence from Michi- brochure say the agency also offers foster
gan. care and adoption services. They say noth-
In Wayne County, where Family to ing about services to keep families together.
Family has been a key part of child welfare So, what was the case made by the
services in recent years, from 2004 to 2006 private agencies? They told lawmakers that
entries into foster care dropped by 20 per- children are better off in foster care with to-
cent. At the same time, substantiated allega- tal strangers in a swank suburb than with
tions of child abuse dropped 22 percent164 – grandma or grandpa, an aunt and uncle, or a
again, indicating that the reduction in foster trusted friend in their own neighborhood,
care was accomplished without compromis- because there is less crime and there are bet-
ing safety. ter schools in the suburbs.167
But if that argument applies to child-
ren whose poverty has been confused with
neglect so child protective services stepped
Some private agencies, in, why doesn’t it also apply to every other
legally required by contract to impoverished child? Why should “neg-
provide help to poor people in lected” children be the only ones to gain
benefits from suburban schools that are said
their own neighborhoods, to be so enormous they outweigh the love of
simply refuse to do it. And a family? Why not just confiscate all impo-
DHS does nothing about it. verished children? And if, in fact, these ben-
efits are so huge, then it’s hard to see how
these same private agencies can really mean
it when they say, with straight faces, “we try
Clearly that kind of success is a our best to reunify these families whenever
threat to agencies that depend on a steady possible.” After all, why would they want to
supply of foster children. And in April, pursue such reunification when that would
2006, a trade association for some of these doom the children to returning to a poor
agencies, the Association of Accredited neighborhood?
Child and Family Agencies, traipsed up to Given an attitude like this from
Lansing to oppose Family to Family. people who are supposed to be leaders, it’s
The Association’s president at the no wonder that the Race Equity Review
time of the hearing was John Schmidt. At found identical attitudes permeating the
the time Schmidt also was president of the frontlines, among caseworkers, judges and
Methodist Children's Home Society – a resi- lawyer guardians ad litem for children. The
dential treatment center; in other words, an review called this
orphanage, and a form of intervention in
children’s lives that has repeatedly proven to Reminiscent of the 19th century child
be virtually worthless and often inherently rescue ideology that led to the separation of
harmful.165 tribal and immigrant children from their
CYCLE OF FAILURE/62

families and communities …168 ly about the birth parents who lose their
children to foster care but also the neighbor-
In case the problems in suggesting
hoods those parents live in.
that material comfort and even good schools
are more important than love aren’t obvious,
consider:
• We’ve been doing it the way the It is obscene to suggest
private agencies want for 150 years. The
very first foster care program, Charles Lor-
that the only way a poor child
ing Brace’s 19th century “orphan trains” should get to go to a “good”
were based on precisely the theory that the school is by trading in his
Michigan agency chiefs offered the legisla-
ture: The dreadful influences of poor big-
family for the privilege.
city neighborhoods supposedly could be
overcome only by shipping the children of
the immigrant poor off to farms in the south The portrait of those neighborhoods
and Midwest. from the agencies is what one might expect
Only it didn’t work too well. Many not from people who genuinely care about
of the children were not orphans at all; they what’s best for children, but rather from
were taken from parents for the same reason people whose only source of information is
children are taken today: The parents – typi- local television news, with its endless parade
cally Catholic immigrants -- were poor and of crime scenes and “perp walks.”
despised. Many of the children wound up But – and it shouldn’t really be ne-
treated little better than slaves. (Brace him- cessary to point this out – even in the most
self was, in fact, a raving bigot who believed crime-plagued neighborhood, most people
poor immigrant parents were genetically in- don’t commit crimes. Even in neighbor-
ferior.)169 hoods where drug dealers congregate on the
• It doesn’t work well now, either. corner, most parents are doing everything
Regardless of any disagreements over solu- they can to keep their children away from
tions, almost everyone concedes that the that corner. Even the poorest communities
current foster care system, which follows have neighborhood associations, communi-
precisely the model advocated by Schmidt, ty-based social service agencies and
is a colossal failure. So why do more of the churches that can form the foundation for
same? helping DHS keep children safe without
One of the main reasons foster care forcing them to leave everyone they know
is such a failure is the emotional devastation and love. The problem is, agencies like
to a child when he loses not just mom and DHS often have been clueless about what
dad but also everyone else in his life who these groups are and where to find them, and
means anything to him. And in many cases, the community groups have been too suspi-
the odds are excellent that as soon as the cious, often with good reason, to work with
child gets used to his new surroundings, she DHS.
or he will be forced to move again, com- Or worse, some private agencies, le-
pounding the trauma. What good is a “bet- gally required by contract to provide help to
ter” school if a child has to keep moving poor people in their own neighborhoods,
from one such school to another? simply refuse to do it. And DHS does noth-
The Michigan agencies’ case is built ing about it.
on a foundation of false stereotypes, not on- That was among the most shocking
findings in the Race Equity Review.170 But
CYCLE OF FAILURE/63

it might help explain why private agencies they’ve included “boilerplate” language in
keep pushing the legislature to make the the state budget that discourages, but does
families – and the children – come to them. not prohibit, neighborhood-based place-
Overcoming these barriers is what ments.172
initiatives like Family to Family are all And last year DHS requested the
about. And, in Wayne County, the initiative withdrawal of both Wayne and Macomb
has helped begin the building of an infra- Counties as Family to Family “anchor sites”
structure of community-based supports. – the highest level of participation in the in-
itiative. Anchor sites receive grants from
the Casey Foundation and on-site technical
assistance.
There is one more little Wayne and Macomb are now consi-
problem with what the dered “network sites” – a less intensive level
agencies are recommending of participation.
So there is one more little problem
that Michigan legislators need with what the agencies are recommending
to know about: It’s probably that Michigan legislators need to know
illegal. about: It’s probably illegal. As the indepen-
dent casereading done in connection with
the CR lawsuit points out: "Federal law re-
quires that children be placed in close prox-
Of course, it would be wonderful if imity to their parents to facilitate visitation
poor children could stay with their birth par- and reunification."173
ents, be surrounded by supportive extended In other words, the feds know that if
family and neighbors and live in upper- a child must be taken from her or his home,
middle-class suburban neighborhoods if they it is far better for that child at least to be able
so chose. If the Michigan Legislature would to see those parents, or be able to see ex-
like to initiate a program to build more af- tended family, or be able to live near their
fordable housing in the suburbs, that would friends and classmates and, yes, not have to
be a great idea. change schools with all the disruption that
But it is obscene to suggest that the causes. Common sense and 150 years of his-
only way a poor child should get to go to a tory say that as well. In fact, it's so obvious
“good” school is by trading in his family for that, as the casereading points out, even the
the privilege. national trade association for child welfare
But for the Association of Accre- agencies, the Child Welfare League of
dited Child and Family Agencies, this isn’t America, feels compelled to say that
really about the children at all. It was left to "placement with foster families who live
the Blog of the Michigan Republican Party outside of the child's community should be
to point out the real agenda. Even as avoided."174
Schmidt’s organization was smearing Fami- In addition, Michigan’s legally-
ly to Family, the group was “vying for more binding settlement with CR calls for work-
of [DHS’] money.” It was seeking an in- ing to keep foster children in their own
crease in agencies’ per diems.171 neighborhoods.175
Unfortunately, legislators have found This doesn’t mean that anyone who
the private agency arguments about money testified at that hearing knew they were re-
being more important than love to be seduc- commending a course of action that might
tive in the past. Since at least FY 2004, be illegal. But Michigan legislators need to
CYCLE OF FAILURE/64

know. They also need to check on the likely trapped in foster care but not to remain safe-
penalty for enacting a policy that deliberate- ly in their own homes.
ly avoids placing children close to their fam-
ilies. It’s likely to be the penalty state law-
makers fear most: loss of federal money. So
if the fact that the private agency recom- Who killed the Michigan
mendations would devastate children isn't child welfare waiver? And
enough reason for lawmakers to ignore why did Marianne Udow let it
them, the fact that it might further harm
Michigan's budget certainly should be. die?

Squandering $100 million a year


the Michigan way In 2006, the federal government of-
Earlier in this report we said one of fered a limited number of “waivers” to the
the best ways to know any government’s states. The waivers work like this: Instead
real priorities is how it spends its money. So of an entitlement, states and the federal gov-
state and federal officials, and lawmakers, ernment estimate how much foster care
can talk till they’re blue in the face about money a given state would have gotten.
how they really want to keep families to- Then the state gets the money as a flat grant.
gether – somehow they never put their mon- The money still could be used for foster
ey where their mouths are. care, but it also could be used for better al-
For every dollar the federal govern- ternatives.
ment spends on safe, proven alternatives to Furthermore, if a state then reduced
foster care, it spends at least nine dollars on its entries into foster care, it still would get
foster care and at least three dollars more on the same amount of money the next year – it
adoption.176 wouldn’t have to give any back, as long as it
The main reason for this is that foster plowed the savings into more help for fami-
care spending is en “entitlement” – like, say, lies.
Social Security or Medicare. For every “eli- The catch: If a state screwed up and
gible” child, states get back anywhere from started taking away more children, there
50 to 74 cents on the dollar. In Michigan it’s would be no more “open spigot” of foster
60 cents, and may soon rise to 63 cents.177 care money; the state would have to foot the
Nationwide, about half of all foster children entire bill. And that is, in fact, another good
are eligible. In Michigan, as of 2004, it was feature of the waiver. It discourages states
only about 34 percent178 -- largely because from a take-the-child-and-run approach.
Michigan quite properly places many child- At first, only two states had the guts
ren in unlicensed kinship care homes which to go for such a waiver – and eventually, one
are not eligible for federal aid. But that would drop out.
federal aid still brings in about $100 million The state that accepted the waiver
per year, and perhaps significantly more, for and stuck with it is Florida. At the time, that
Michigan alone - a huge pot of money that state was virtually synonymous with child
can be used only for foster care. welfare failure. Today, the state has turned
In contrast, far less is available for the corner. The last person to leave the job
prevention and family preservation – and it’s as head of the state’s huge child welfare
not an entitlement. In American child wel- agency left as a hero – something that is al-
fare, children are deemed “entitled” to be most unheard-of in the field. In 2007, for
the first time in nearly a decade, there was a
CYCLE OF FAILURE/65

significant reduction in entries into care, 179 tout the waiver when it was approved. As
a significant reduction in deaths of children the Lansing State Journal reported:
previously known to the child welfare agen- Thousands of Michigan youths may
cy,180 – and regions taking proportionately be able to remain in their homes under a
fewer children typically have had better federal waiver allowing the state to use fos-
safety outcomes.181 ter care money to help families rather than
There are many reasons for the tur- take away their children. …
naround, notably strong leadership at the Families at risk of having their
state and regional levels. But another key children removed could instead be offered
factor was the waiver. mental health counseling, substance abuse
"In Florida we call it the ‘Child First treatment, safer housing, clothing and pa-
Waiver’ since this greater flexibility means renting lessons.
greater hope for children,” says Alan Abra- "It's all about helping sooner before
mowitz, director of the Florida Department children are in danger," said state Depart-
of Children and Families Office of Family ment of Human Services Director Marianne
Safety, and one of the rising stars in the Udow. "In most cases, these parents want to
field. “The ability to have dollars follow the be good parents, but they don't always know
child and not a placement allows Florida where to go for services."184
communities to be innovative and focus on
prevention, education and reunification of Once again, it looked like Michigan
families."182 would be “a contender.”
And now the waiver is more impor- That was in April, 2006. In August
tant than ever. Like Michigan, Florida has of that year, Detroit Free Press columnist
been exceptionally hard hit by the collapse Rochelle Riley still was citing the waiver in
of the American economy. Budget cuts listing progress at DHS.185
threaten the state’s child welfare reforms. And then, suddenly, it was gone.
But the waiver cushions the blow in three At the very last minute – after win-
ways: ning approval from the federal government,
First, of course, it allows the state to after the big public announcement -- Michi-
get the most for its money by investing it in gan chickened out.
services that are better for children and less And now, as Michigan plunges dee-
expensive than foster care. per into recession, in child welfare, there is
Second, it lets states keep savings nothing to cushion the blow.
from reducing foster care that otherwise But that bad news for children is
would have to be returned to the federal great news for the foster care-industrial
government – as long as the money is complex. Now, not one penny of that $100
plowed back into child welfare. million can be diverted from their foster
But also, if the state cuts too deeply, homes, their group homes or their “residen-
it will lose the money; creating an extra in- tial treatment centers.”
centive to spare vital child welfare services. What we still don’t know is: Who
The other state granted a waiver was killed the Michigan child welfare waiver?
Michigan. And why did Marianne Udow let it die?
Pursuing such a waiver was a key
recommendation of a high-powered commit- And now, the war against
tee of experts studying racial bias in Michi- grandparents
gan child welfare, a committee co-chaired Even with the waiver dead, Family
by Udow herself.183 And she was quick to to Family under attack, and Families First
CYCLE OF FAILURE/66

constantly getting its budget cut, there still help from CR, through its war against
was one area in which Michigan was a lead- grandparents. (See page 8).
er: Placing children with their own extended If CR succeeds and if Family to
families instead of with strangers. Family is marginalized there will be nothing
But, as noted earlier, there is a prob- left of Marianne Udow’s tentative reforms.
lem with kinship care – if you happen to be Once again, Michigan will have thrown the
a private agency. The private agencies get fight and lost the chance to be a contender
only a very small piece of that action. While for champion of children.
private agencies supervise 48 percent of So a good place to start turning
stranger care cases, they oversee only 16 around Michigan child welfare is by ending
percent of kinship cases.186 the war against grandparents. And that’s
But opponents of kinship care, and where our recommendations for reform be-
friends of the foster care-industrial complex gin.
are in luck. They’re getting high-powered

Recommendations
Before listing the recommendations, a word about money – actually, two words: It’s
there.
Michigan can afford every recommendation in this report – because there is no shortage
of funds for child welfare. Rather the money is being squandered on investigating false reports
and trivial cases and on needless foster care and institutionalization.
Because Michigan turned down the waiver, a portion of the savings from reducing foster
care and institutionalization revert to the federal government. Even so, the state share is suffi-
cient to fund serious reform of child welfare.
nificant impact on ensuring health and safety
Help for families should be eliminated. Licensing does have
some benefits – notably it makes the place-
RECOMMENDATION #1: Stop ment eligible for federal aid. But licensing
the war against Michigan’s grandparents. of grandparents should be done with a carrot
DHS should immediately seek renegotiation instead of a stick. For starters, the require-
of the clause in its consent decree with CR ments for licensing should be simplified not
requiring formal licensure of all kinship care only for relatives but for strangers as well.
homes. If CR will not negotiate, the state In addition –
should go to federal court and seek to reopen RECOMMENDATION #3:
that part of the decree. Grandparents and other relatives should
A mass expulsion of children from be offered aid to meet minimum stan-
the loving homes of grandparents is too high dards. For example, if grandparents live in
a price to pay for peace with a group that a home that truly is unsafe, they should be
calls itself Children’s Rights, but under- given the aid they need to fix the home or
stands neither children nor rights. move elsewhere.
RECOMMENDATION #2: Michi- RECOMMENDATION #4:
gan should dramatically streamline its en- Whether or not they are licensed, rela-
tire foster care licensing process. All tives should be given financial support
regulations that do not have a clear and sig- equal to that paid to strangers. In the case
of unlicensed relatives that may require the
CYCLE OF FAILURE/67

state to pick up the entire tab. That’s still reform plan emphasizing family preserva-
likely to save the state money. Because kin- tion, it won’t reduce caseloads; it will just
ship care usually is so much better than leave Michigan with the same lousy system
stranger care, children are less likely to only bigger.
bounce from home to home and wind up in RECOMMENDATION #8: Stop
more expensive institutional care. And, of using TANF for any family except a birth
course, children raised in stable homes by family and that family’s extended family
loving relatives are more likely to succeed in members. That means no more taking
later life, becoming contributors to society money out of poor people’s pockets to sub-
instead of requiring more help from taxpay- sidize middle-class families’ adoptions. At
ers – or more institutionalization in adult a minimum, TANF should go only into child
psychiatric centers and jails. welfare services that keep birth families to-
RECOMMENDATION #5: Ban gether, such as Families First and payments
the placement of young children in insti- to kinship caregivers. Long term –
tutions. Institutionalization is, by far, the RECOMMENDATION #9: Michi-
worst form of “care” – it corrodes the gan should phase out the use of TANF as
psyches of children and typically leaves a child welfare slush fund. TANF funds
them prepared for nothing in later life except should be used only for their original pur-
more institutionalization. pose: concrete help to assist low income
The younger the child, the greater families in becoming self sufficient. This
the harm. That’s why, as noted earlier, New still can have a significant impact on child
Jersey’s consent decree bans the placement welfare by funding things like low-income
of young children in institutions – and that day care so children aren’t taken away be-
state has been 97 percent successful in pre- cause of “lack of supervision” charges. But
venting such children from being institutio- the state should take responsibility for its
nalized. most vulnerable children and resume fund-
RECOMMENDATION #6: Cut ing Families First and the other preventive
overall institutionalization at least in half services it has abandoned in recent years.
within five years, by building a compre- RECOMMENDATION #10 Un-
hensive infrastructure of Wraparound derstanding that much of what is labeled
and other alternative services. Illinois al- child neglect is, in fact, poverty, DHS
ready institutionalizes only about eight per- must reorient its emphasis from often
cent of its children, in Michigan it’s 14.5 meaningless counseling and parent educa-
percent. 187 Five years is plenty of time to tion programs which serve largely to
equal, and slightly surpass, where Illinois is make the helpers feel good, to hard ser-
already. vices to ameliorate the worst aspects of
RECOMMENDATION #7: Michi- poverty. That means subsidies for day care
gan should meet the settlement require- and rent, one-time payments for home re-
ments for reducing worker caseloads by pairs and other concrete needs, job training
hiring prevention workers, family preser- and “flex funds” that can be used for what-
vation workers and drug treatment work- ever a particular family may need.
ers, not more investigators and foster care RECOMMENDATION #11 In
workers. honor of the 20th anniversary of Families
If DHS tries to reduce caseloads just First (which was 2008) DHS should final-
by hiring more people to investigate families ly put the publication issued for the pro-
and put children in foster care, without mak- gram’s tenth anniversary on its website –
ing such hiring part of a comprehensive prominently. That, of course, would be a
CYCLE OF FAILURE/68

symbolic gesture. It should be backed up through the process. I felt so ostracized and
with substance: isolated.”
RECOMMENDATION #12 Mich- Now Calloway is a Parent Partner for
igan should fully fund Families First. the Association For Children's Mental
Funds should be available to help every Health (Southwest Detroit).
family who needs it. This will more than “During my years of addiction, I was
pay for itself. The State Auditor’s office has taking from society,” Calloway says. “Now,
shown that this program generates signifi- I’m giving back to society.”
cant savings.
RECOMMENDATION #13: The
Legislature should remove the “boiler-
plate” language in the state budget that The Illinois experience
discourages neighborhood-based place- proves that performance-
ments – and may encourage DHS to vi- based contracting not only
olate federal law and its own consent de-
cree. can dramatically reduce
RECOMMENDATION #14 Mich- needless substitute care, it al-
igan should expand the Family to Family so can improve child safety.
initiative to every county. DHS should
immediately send a loud, clear message that
it fully supports the program and expects
every county to support it in letter and spirit. Funds for these various initiatives
Once again, by using Team Decisionmaking could be made available by curbing vastly
correctly, to ensure that only those children more expensive institutional placements,
who really can’t be safe at home enter out- improving screening of calls to child abuse
of-home care, by reducing institutionaliza- hotlines and using funds now committed to
tion when some form of substitute care is hiring investigators for family preservation
necessary, and by building community rela- workers instead. But Michigan also should
tionships to enhance support for families, seek more funding for prevention and family
this relatively low-cost program is a money preservation. Here’s how:
saver. RECOMMENDATION #16:
RECOMMENDATION #15: Michigan should beg the Obama Admin-
Michigan should fully fund the “Parent istration for a second chance at a waiver
Partners” program and make it available like the one it foolishly turned down in
statewide. 2006. This would allow about $100 million
Parent partners are parents who lost a currently restricted to foster care to be used
child to DHS, were reunited, and now help for better alternatives as well.
parents going through the same process. A RECOMMENDATION #17: DHS
Parent Partner serves as a mentor, coach and should fast-track a statewide perfor-
advocate. The current program, in Wayne mance-based contracting system to end
County, is funded by the Annie E. Casey the perverse incentive private agencies
Foundation. now have to hold children in foster care
Sheryl Calloway, whose story is told indefinitely while their per diem payments
on page 40, says one of the things that made roll in. There are a variety of ways that can
it so difficult to reunite with her child was be done, including the Illinois model, in
trying to navigate the whole process alone. which agencies compete on the basis of get-
“I wish I’d had somebody who’d been ting children into safe, permanent homes, or
CYCLE OF FAILURE/69

a model in which agencies receive greater not enough. Comprehensive reform of


payment if children are returned safely to Michigan child welfare also requires mea-
their own homes or adopted, and diminished ningful due process protections for families.
payments if the children languish in foster Therefore:
care.
The foster care-industrial complex RECOMMENDATION #20: Qual-
will concoct all sorts of scare scenarios to ity legal representation must be available
try to prevent this, and they’ll point out that to all parents who must face DHS.
an experiment in performance-based con- It is ludicrous to claim that children
tracting took place in Wayne County some are protected from needless removal when
years ago. But, in classic Michigan style, their impoverished parents often are, literal-
the Wayne County experiment was stopped ly, defense-less.
before it could prove itself. The Illinois ex- The current Michigan system needs
perience proves that performance-based con- to be replaced with one which, at a mini-
tracting not only can dramatically reduce mum, guarantees indigent parents high qual-
needless substitute care, it also can improve ity legal representation from the moment the
child safety. child is removed – or the moment an agency
Fortunately, some form of perfor- decides to go to court to place a family un-
mance-based contracting is required by the der its supervision, even while leaving the
consent decree. children at home. Every county, or the
RECOMMENDATION #18: State, should be required to establish an in-
Michigan should provide sufficient fund- stitutional provider of defense counsel with
ing to make drug treatment geared to the resources at least equal to those available to
needs of parents, usually mothers, availa- the lawyers who represent DHS.
ble immediately to any parent who wants Those resources must include social
it. This must include in-patient programs workers who can offer alternatives to DHS
where parents can live with their child- cookie-cutter, no-services “service plans,”
ren. The infants in that University of Flori- and parent advocates similar to those in the
da study (see page 40) are trying to tell us Wayne County Parent Partners program.
something. We owe it to them to listen. Providing “lawyer guardians ad li-
And all those residential treatment centers tem” for children is not enough to protect
that could close if Michigan reduced its them from wrongful removal, for two rea-
overuse of congregate care would make sons.
great drug treatment campuses. First, LGALs tend to rubber-stamp
RECOMMENDATION #19: DHS child welfare agencies, fighting them, if at
should create a Michigan Child Welfare all, only when the agencies want to return
Brain Trust. The outstanding Michigan children home. Indeed, as noted elsewhere
leaders who were lured to other states and in this report, in Michigan LGALs some-
other endeavors on behalf of children should times even fill in for prosecutors.
be invited to return to advise DHS on a And LGALs tend to be as over-
regular basis. whelmed as birth parent attorneys – to the
point that they had to be ordered even to
Due process meet with the children they claim to
Improving “services” to families is “represent.”188 And there is evidence some
CYCLE OF FAILURE/70

Leveling the playing field in Washington State


HOW PROVIDING GOOD LAWYERS FOR PARENTS HELPS THEIR CHILDREN

In Pierce County, Washington, the judge in charge of the county’s juvenile courts was
dismayed at the escalating rate of terminations of parental rights – knowing that he was
dooming some of the children to a miserable existence in foster care.
So he persuaded the legislature to provide enough money for defense attorneys to
have resources equal to those of the Attorney General’s office, which represents the state
child welfare agency in juvenile court. The result: successful reunification of families
increased by more than 50 percent.
And that’s not because lawyers “got their clients off.”
Where the parents are innocent, lawyers have time to prove it. Where there is a
problem in the home that must be corrected, the lawyers have time to sit down with the
parents, explain early on what they are up against and guide them through the process of
making whatever changes are needed. Working closely with their own staff social workers,
they also can advocate for more and better services geared to what families really need,
instead of the cookie-cutter, no-service “service plans” often offered by child welfare
agencies.
Between 2000 and 2003, of 144 cases in the program in which families were reunified,
not one was brought back to court.
“These children aren’t coming back,” said Bobbie Bridge, then a Justice of the
Washington State Supreme Court, and a supporter of the program, “and we do get them back
when we make bad reunification decisions.”
The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges is publicizing the results,
and even the State Attorney General at the time, who had to face the better-prepared lawyers,
supported the project and wanted it expanded.189 (We don’t know if she still holds that view in
her current job – governor.) It’s now in 25 of the state’s 39 counties. Further information
about the program is available at http://www.opd.wa.gov/PRP-home.htm
New York City has let contracts to provide similar representation for half of all
indigent parents. The city is doing this with the full support of its child welfare agency, the
Administration for Children’s Services. This is because ACS recognizes that it is not
infallible, and recognizes the role lawyers for birth parents can play in fighting for help for
families.
It’s also probably because, while at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, before becoming
ACS Commissioner, John Mattingly co-authored a scathing report on how the city’s Family
Courts ran roughshod over families. The report quoted judges admitting they routinely
rubber-stamped removals even when they thought ACS failed to make its case, because they
were afraid of winding up on the front page if they sent a child home and something went
wrong.190
But in Michigan such programs are few and far between.
A new one shows promise for taking quality legal representation to the next level. The
University of Michigan Law School’s Detroit Center for Family Advocacy will seek to provide
this kind of legal assistance and advocacy even before anyone calls a child abuse hotline –
heading off problems before a child abuse investigation even begins.
But this largely foundation-funded initiative will operate only in a single Detroit neigh-
borhood. (Funders include the Skillman Foundation, which also funds NCCPR’s advocacy ef-
forts in Michigan.)191
Such programs should be the rule, not the exception.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/71

of them still fail to do so.192 1981.193


The second problem with relying on RECOMMENDATION #24: The
law guardians is discussed in Recommenda- Michigan Legislature should pass legisla-
tion 22. tion clarifying what should, in fact, be ob-
RECOMMENDATION #21: The vious: If a non-custodial parent pleads to
institutional provider of counsel should neglect, that should have no impact on the
have lawyers available 24-hours-a-day, rights of the custodial parent. Such a law
seven-days-a-week, so that they can begin would overturn the bizarre rulings of Michi-
to work on a case from the moment a child gan’s Court of Appeals which allow a non-
is removed from the home, instead of only at custodial parent with an ax to grind to de-
or after the first hearing – or even later – as prive a custodial parent of custody with no
usually is the case now. due process at all. The legislature should go
RECOMMENDATION #22: Law further and adopt California’s approach in
guardians should act as lawyers. For any which, when a custodial parent loses legal
child old enough to express a rational pre- custody of a child in a child maltreatment
ference, LGALs should advocate for what proceeding the non-custodial parent is pre-
that child wants, even if the LGAL does sumed fit, and the state must prove other-
not think it’s in the child’s “best inter- wise.
ests.” RECOMMENDATION #25: The
Currently in Michigan, and many legislature should reexamine the huge
other states, the job of the guardian is to number of grounds for termination of pa-
fight for what the guardian thinks is best for rental rights in current Michigan law. It
the child – even if the child disagrees. The should streamline these grounds and require
guardian may make the court aware of what findings of specific, serious failings on the
the child wants but, if the guardian thinks part of parents. In particular the catch-all
that is bad for the child, the guardian fights clause described earlier in this report should
against the child’s wishes. That can mean be repealed.
that the only parties without strong advo- RECOMMENDATION #26: The
cates in their corners are the parents – and legislature should specifically prohibit the
the child. fact that a termination of parental rights
Of course, the fact that a child wants petition has been filed from being a factor
a particular outcome doesn’t mean he or she in determining whether children will be
should get it. But deciding what’s best is allowed to visit their parents. It is the
what judges are for. And they can’t truly do height of arrogance to assume that just be-
justice unless everyone has an advocate cause the state files a TPR petition the state
making the best possible case for her or his is right – and therefore the child should be
side. punished by being cut off from her or his
RECOMMENDATION #23: The parents immediately. At one time that was
Michigan Legislature should significantly required under Michigan law; it still is per-
narrow the definition of “neglect.” The mitted. It shouldn’t be.
current definition “defines in” virtually The fact that some adults have filed a
every impoverished child in the state. Good legal document changes nothing in the emo-
language can be found in a model law writ- tional life of a child. If visits were good for
ten by Prof. Michael Wald of Stanford Uni- a child before the petition was filed, they are
versity Law School in 1976, and revised by just as good for the child afterwards.
an American Bar Association Committee in RECOMMENDATION #27 The
CYCLE OF FAILURE/72

legislature should repeal the law requir- vestigation, what kind of call should trigger
ing DHS to automatically petition for sending help to a family, and what kind of
termination of parental rights, in most call should be screened out entirely.
cases, whenever a parent who has lost a As the Race Equity Review points
child to TPR in the past has another out, Wayne County appears to accept vir-
child. These issues should be examined on tually any call, so, for example, someone
a case by case basis. There is a vast differ- calling DHS for help to heat the family
ence between, say, a mother who tortured home in the winter may well wind up inves-
and murdered one child while pregnant with tigated for child abuse.194
another and a mother who voluntarily sur- Not only does that traumatize the
rendered a child at the age of 16 and has child living in the home that simply needs
now given birth again at age 32. The law heat, it also steals a caseworker’s time from
should be flexible enough to recognize such finding a child in real danger.
differences. RECOMMENDATION 29: As
part of this screening mechanism, ano-
nymous calls should not be accepted.
Of all the sources of child abuse re-
There always will be ports, anonymous reports consistently are
screening in child welfare. the least reliable. They’re almost always
The choice is not between wrong.
A study of every anonymous report
screening and no screening. received in the Bronx, New York, over a
The choice is between two year period found that only 12.4 percent
rational screening and met the incredibly low criteria for “substan-
tiating” reports – and not one of those cases
irrational screening. involved death or serious injury. The re-
searchers found that “one case was indicated
for ‘diaper rash’ one case for welfare fraud,
Although technically, current law al- and two cases because the apartment was
lows DHS to make exceptions to the re- ‘dirty.’”195
quirement to petition for TPR under these Anonymous reporting should be re-
circumstances it still makes termination the placed by confidential reporting. If some-
default position, and DHS often is afraid to one who may have a grudge or someone
do otherwise. who simply may be clueless wants to claim
RECOMMENDATION #28: Be- that, say, a neighbor is abusing a child, that
fore a call is accepted by a child abuse person should be required to give the hotline
“hotline” and referred for investigation, operator his or her name and phone number.
the caller must be able to demonstrate That information still should be kept secret
that s/he does, indeed, have reasonable from the accused in almost all cases, but the
cause to suspect maltreatment. That re- hotline needs to know. That will immediate-
quires a uniform, rational method for ly discourage false and trivial reports.
screening hotline calls. The law should allow the accused to
The consent decree requires Michi- go to a judge and explain why he feels he is
gan to replace its county hotlines with one being harassed by false reports, and by
statewide hotline. But that’s not enough. whom. The judge should check the record
That statewide hotline must include rational and, if the accused is right, and if the judge
criteria for what kind of call merits and in- is persuaded that the reports are an act of ha-
CYCLE OF FAILURE/73

rassment, the name should be released to the that case records are closed. As long as the
accused, who should have the right to sue records are sealed, families who want to tell
for damages. their stories still can be thwarted by DHS
Of course, the objection to banning workers and bureaucrats who will tell a re-
anonymous reports, and the objection to any porter: “Oh, there’s really so much more to
kind of serious screening mechanism, is that it, and we wish we could tell you, but we
some anonymous calls may be legitimate. just can’t – confidentiality, you know.”
That’s true.
If you ban anonymous reports, some
real cases might be missed – though anyone
who is sincere and has genuine reason to When DHS is right, it’s
suspect maltreatment should be comfortable important that the public know
with confidential reporting. it, and the agency have the
But more real cases are missed now
by overloading the system. There always right to vindicate itself.
will be screening in child welfare. The
choice is not between screening and no
screening. The choice is between rational Too often, reporters accept this “veto
screening and irrational screening. The of silence.”
more cases that cascade down upon investi- If almost all DHS records on a given
gators the less time they get for each one. case were available to the public, reporters
So some get short shrift. It is far safer for would have a much better look at all sides of
children if cases are screened rationally by the story.
eliminating anonymous reports, rather than (Records are not always accurate,
irrationally based on which file floats to the however, and claims in them should not be
top of the pile on a caseworker’s desk. accepted at face value. The Race Equity Re-
As the authors of the Bronx study view found “notably insufficient and error-
put it, in recommending that anonymous re- ridden documentation” in the majority of
ports be rejected: “The resources of child case files examined.)197
protective agencies are not limitless. The There should be a “rebuttable pre-
time and energy spent investigating false re- sumption” that almost all case records are
ports could better be given to more serious open. As noted in the previous recommen-
cases, and children may suffer less as a re- dation, the names of people reporting al-
sult.”196 leged maltreatment still would almost al-
RECOMMENDATION #30: Re- ways remain confidential. Other records
verse the current presumption that most would be opened unless the lawyer for the
child welfare records are closed. parents or the LGAL for the child could per-
To its credit, Michigan is among the suade the judge, by clear and convincing
approximately 17 states that allow the press evidence, that opening a given record would
and/or the public into court hearings in child cause severe emotional damage to a child.
abuse cases. This provides more accounta- The judge then would keep closed
bility than states where the entire process is only the minimum amount of material
secret. But it is not enough. needed to avoid the damage.
The amount that can be learned from DHS would not even be allowed to
what is often a cursory hearing lasting only a ask for secrecy. That’s because DHS has no
few minutes is limited. Therefore it also is interest in secrecy other than to cover up its
urgent to reverse the current presumption own failings.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/74

RECOMMENDATION #31: allow us to hear what we want, or expect, to hear.


DHS to comment freely on any case made That often leads to distortion. In addition, as
public by any other source. noted earlier, the Race Equity Review found
In other words, if a birth parent goes that case files are rife with error. When it
to a reporter and says “my child was wrong- comes down to the word of a caseworker vs.
fully taken,” DHS should be free to tell its a so-called “child abuser,” the only hope the
side of the story, as well as to release accused may have to set the record straight
records under the conditions noted above. is a tape-recorded record.
At least four states have similar pro- And there certainly is nothing oner-
visions in their current laws. The broadest is ous in a requirement that a worker do no
in Arizona, where the child welfare agency more than push the record button on a small,
is free to “confirm, clarify or correct”198 any inexpensive microcassette recorder.
material about a case made public by anyone
else. Additional recommendations
Such a law serves two valuable pur-
poses. First, it will encourage journalists to The following recommendations are dis-
override the veto of silence. No longer cussed in detail in NCCPR’s Due Process
could DHS say it wished it could talk but it Agenda, available online at
could not. Now reporters would know the www.nccpr.org/reports/dueprocess.pdf
agency was stonewalling. Conversely, when RECOMMENDATION #34: No
DHS is right, it’s important that the public one should be listed in a state’s central
know it, and the agency have the right to registry of alleged child abusers, and no
vindicate itself. allegation should be substantiated, until,
RECOMMENDATION #32: The at a minimum, the family has had an ad-
Michigan Supreme Court should declare ministrative hearing conducted by a hear-
a statewide Family Reunification Day. On ing officer outside of DHS. The standard
this day, a special docket should be created, of proof should be “clear and convinc-
allowing the day to be devoted exclusively ing.” That also should be the standard
to celebrating reunifications of families. for “substantiating” an allegation in the
The Supreme Court should pour time and first place.
resources into this day at least equal to the RECOMMENDATION #35: From
effort it exerts on behalf of adoption day. the moment a child is removed until the
And if the Supreme Court refuses to do it, first hearing at which all sides are
DHS should create an annual statewide reu- represented, DHS shall be responsible for
nification celebration of its own. arranging daily visits, unless it can show,
RECOMMENDATION #33: All by clear and convincing evidence, that
interviews conducted by DHS personnel this would cause severe emotional harm
in the course of child maltreatment inves- to the child. This idea was first proposed as
tigations – not just interviews with child- part of the model law noted earlier. In addi-
ren – should be, at a minimum, audi- tion to the enormous benefits to the child,
otaped. For interviews conducted at DHS such a requirement is likely to make workers
offices or similar settings, videotape is think twice about taking away children just
preferable. Information from any inter- to protect themselves, instead of the child-
view that is not taped should be inadmiss- ren.
ible in all court proceedings. RECOMMENDATION #36: The
While in general, caseworkers don’t standard of proof in all court proceedings
deliberately lie, it is human nature for all of should be raised from the current stan-
CYCLE OF FAILURE/75

dard in most states, including Michigan, dangerous assumptions that can lead us to
“preponderance of the evidence,” to try to fix what isn’t broken or make worse
“clear and convincing.” At the very first what is.
hearing, which actually is the most impor- More than thirty years ago, three
tant, the standard in Michigan is even lower. scholars, Albert Solnit, Joseph Goldstein,
DHS need only provide “probable cause.” and Anna Freud, proposed an alternative
That means a child can be held in foster care phrase. They said “best interests of the
for months based on a standard lower than child” should be replaced with “least detri-
the one used to decide which insurance mental alternative.”199
company pays for a fender-bender. “Least detrimental alternative” is a
RECOMMENDATION 37: In all humble phrase. It recognizes that whenever
places where it appears, the phrase “best we intervene in family life we do harm.
interests of the child” should be replaced Sometimes we must intervene anyway, be-
with the phrase “least detrimental alter- cause intervening is less harmful than not in-
native.” tervening. But whenever we step in, harm is
Currently, almost all state laws in- done.
volving custody of children are liberally The phrase “least detrimental alter-
sprinkled with the phrase “best interests of native” is a constant reminder that we must
the child.” always balance the harm that we may think a
But that is a phrase filled with hu- family is doing against the harm of interven-
bris. It says we are wise enough always to ing. It is exactly the shot of humility that
know what is best and capable always of every child welfare system needs.
acting on what we know. In fact, those are ###
CYCLE OF FAILURE/76

NOTES:
1
Personal communication, Prof. Ronald Davidson.
2
Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Signs of Progress in Child Welfare Reform, April, 2003, available online at
http://www.state.il.us/dcfs/docs/SignsProg.pdf.
3
Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Executive Statistical Summary, December, 2008, available online at
http://www.state.il.us/DCFS/docs/execstat.pdf
4
Personal communication, Jess McDonald, former Director, Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
5
In some cases, the term “informal” is used to denote a case in which an agency like DHS arranges the placement, and may require
it, but does not take legal custody of the child. In this report, however, the term is used to denote a kinship placement in which a
child welfare agency is not involved in any way; something that some refer to as “private” kinship care.
6
Child Welfare League of America, National Data Analysis System. Go to
http://ndas.cwla.org/data_stats/access/predefined/home.asp?MainTopicID=3&SubTopicID=27 then follow instructions for creating
table.
7
Ibid.
8
Tom Condon, “DCF Works to Shift Priorities,” The Hartford Courant, December 24, 2000.
9
Michigan Department of Human Services, Licensing Rules for Foster Family Homes and Foster Family
Group Homes for Children, March, 2007, available online at http://www.michigan.gov/documents/dhs/DHS-OCAL-PUB-
0010_180374_7.pdf
10
Center for the Study of Social Policy (CSSP), Race Equity Review: Findings from a Qualitative Analysis of Racial Disproportionali-
ty and Disparity for African American Children and Families in Michigan’s Child Welfare System (Washington: January 19, 2009).
11
Personal communication, Mary Chaliman, Field Operations Executive Assistant, Children's Services Administration, Michigan De-
partment of Human Services, December 13, 2008.
12
Marc A. Winokur, et. al, “Matched Comparison of Children in Kinship Care and Foster Care on Child Welfare Outcomes,” Families
in Society, Volume 89, No. 3, 2008, available online at http://www.familiesinsociety.org/New/Teleconf/081007Winokur/89-
3Winokur.pdf
13
Children’s Research Center, Analysis of Case Practice and Compliance with Standards in Michigan Foster Care, February 5,
2008. Available online at http://www.childrensrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/2008-02-05_mi_case_record_review.pdf
14
David M. Rubin et. al., “Impact of Kinship Care on Behavioral Well-being for Children in Out-of-Home Care,” Archives of Pediatric
and Adolescent Medicine, 162(6):550-556. Published online, June 2, 2008, at http://archpedi.ama-
assn.org/cgi/content/full/162/6/550
15
Studies cited in Mark Testa, et. al., Family Ties: Supporting Permanence for Children in Safe and Stable Foster Care With Rela-
tives and Other Caregivers, University of Illinois School of Social Work, Children and Family Research Center, October, 2004, avail-
able online at http://www.fosteringresults.org/results/reports/pewreports_10-13-04_alreadyhome.pdf, and Generations United, Time
for Reform: Support Relatives in Providing Foster Care and Permanent Homes for Children, March 2007, available online at
http://www.kidsarewaiting.org/tools/reports/files/0004.pdf
16
Winokur, et. al, note 12, supra.
17
Sharon Emery, “Report: Wide racial disparity in child welfare,” Jackson Citizen Patriot, March 21, 2006.
18
“Claire Cummings, “Seventh Heaven: Couple adopts seventh child on Michigan Adoption Day,” Jackson Citizen Patriot, Novem-
ber 22, 2008.
19
Prof. Mark Testa made the remark at a news conference releasing the report cited in note 15. The transcript is available online at
http://www.fosteringresults.org/press/pewpress_10-13-04_fednewsbureau.pdf
20
Except as otherwise noted, all information in this section is from CSSP, note 10, supra.
21
NCCPR has reviewed the SDM questionnaires. The higher the score the greater the risk. “Strengths” generally get a score of ze-
ro, therefore if the strengths line did not exist at all, the score would remain unchanged.
22
All information for this section is from, John Goad, Michigan Department of Human Services:
An Evaluation of the Capacity to Assure the Safety of Foster Children, February 11, 2008 and Cathy R. Crabtree, “Formula for Dis-
aster,” A Management Review of the Michigan Department of Human Services,” 2008. The documents are available online at
http://www.childrensrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/2008-02-11_mi_abuse_and_fatality_report.pdf and
http://www.childrensrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/2008-02-08_mi_management_review.pdf
23
We are indebted for the phrase “protected to death” to the no longer published alternative weekly New Times, Los Angeles, which
used it as the headline for a cover story in 1998.
24
The Urban Institute has compared the total amount that states spent on child welfare in 2004. (Cynthia Andrews Scarcella, et. al,
The Cost of Protecting Vulnerable Children V, (Washington: The Urban Institute, May 24, 2006. Available online at
http://www.urban.org/publications/311314.html) NCCPR divided those totals by the number of impoverished children in each state.
Alabama spent $1,157 per impoverished child. The national average was $1,895. Michigan spent $1,982. But the real figure for
Michigan almost certainly is higher – because Michigan was one of only 11 states where the Urban Institute was unable to get com-
plete data. Michigan was unable to calculate the amount of Medicaid money spent on child welfare. Add that in and the Michigan
total probably would exceed the total for Illinois, which was $2,170 – and Illinois was able to provide complete data.
25
CWLA, note 6, supra.
26
Crabtree, note 22, supra.
27
Cynthia Andrews Scarcella, et. al, The Cost of Protecting Vulnerable Children IV, (Washington: The Urban Institute, December
20, 2004. Available online at http://www.urban.org/publications/411115.html).
28
State of Michigan Department of Human Services, Fiscal Year 2007-2008 Report on the Details of Allocations Within Program
Budgeting Line-Items in 2007 Public Act 131, March 26, 2008, available online at http://michigan.gov/documents/dhs/DHS-
Legislative-Sec514-PA131-2007-CPS_227770_7.pdf.
29
We estimate Michigan’s total spending on substitute care at anywhere from $300 million to $471.6 million per year. See note 35,
infra for further explanation of this estimate. If Michigan is like the nation as a whole, about 45 percent of foster care funds are spent
on group homes and institutions.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/77

30
Judith Meltzer, Progress of the New Jersey Department of Children and Families, Monitoring Report for Charlie and Nadine H. v.
Corzine,(Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Social Policy, October 30, 2008), chart, p.18
31
Ibid.
32
Ron Fonger, “Foster care number swells; welfare-to-work one reason: Official” Flint Journal, September 9, 2003.
33
See note 35,for details on this estimate.
34
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, “Settlement Agreement,” Dwayne B. v. Granholm, Case # 2:06-cv-13548,
July 3, 2008, available online at http://www.childrensrights.org/wp-content/uploads//2008/09/22008-07-03_mi_signed_settlement.pdf
35
The low end of this very rough estimate is based on the assumption that the cost of the Michigan foster care bureaucracy adds at
least $75 million to the $223 million we know Michigan spends on “foster care payments” for a total cost of about $300 million per
year. This is based on DHS estimates in news accounts that the waiver was worth about $100 million in federal money under a
program called Title IV-E, and other DHS estimates that IV-E pays for roughly 28 to 32 percent of foster care costs. (Chart: Foster
Care Caseload, Funding Source Per Year, personal communication, Anita Peters, Michigan Department of Human Services.) The
higher end is based on figures compiled by the Urban Institute. They show that nationally, in FY 2004, about 68 percent of IV-E
money paid for foster care maintenance, administration and training. Michigan received a total of $227 million in IV-E payments
that year. Our higher end estimate is based on 68 percent of that money going into foster care, and that figure representing one-
third of total foster care spending in Michigan.
36
For anyone who doesn’t know it, see Brian Dickerson, “Hard Lemonade, hard price,” Detroit Free Press, April 28, 2008.
37
Decision of U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein, Nicholson v. Williams, Case #00-CV2229, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of
New York, March 1, 2002. The section of the decision summarizing expert testimony is available online at
http://www.nccpr.org/index_files/Page339.html
38
Ibid.
39
Cleve R. Wootson Jr., “Mother of 6 battles court, past-due rent,” Detroit Free Press, July 1, 2004.
40
NCCPR calculates rates of child removal by comparing the number of children taken away in a given jurisdiction over the course
of a year to a Census Bureau estimate of the total number of impoverished children in that jurisdiction. DHS provided entry into care
data for each county for the first ten months of 2008, we then projected the rate for the full year by assuming entries in November
and December equaled the monthly average for the previous ten months. In ranking counties, we excluded any in which the total
number of impoverished children was under 2,000. The full NCCPR Michigan-Rate-of-Removal Index is available from NCCPR.
41
Terry Katz, “Dad must pay fines, follow law to see daughters,” Sturgis Journal, May 7, 2005.
42
Jack Kresnak, “Hints of trouble: As his behavior worsens, his foster mother is on edge,” Detroit Free Press, December 3, 2007.
43
Not her real name. Although the news account of this case, cited below, uses the real names of the child and her mother – with
their permission – that was four years ago, and we are withholding those names now in case either mother or child might now prefer
it that way.
44
Laura Potts, “The ups and downs continue for 16-year-old after sexual assaults,” Detroit Free Press, September 7, 2004.
45
CSSP, note 10, supra.
46
Jack Kresnak, “Report spreads blame for child’s beating death,” Detroit Free Press, September 16, 2004.
47
Doug Guthrie, “$30m suit filed in death of boy,” Detroit News, November 4, 2008; Tammy Stables Battaglia, “$30-million suit
claims her son starved,” Detroit Free Press, November 5, 2008.
48
Karen Bouffard, “The boy who had no chance,” Detroit News, March 2, 2006.
49
Kresnak, note 42, supra.
50
Bouffard, note 48, supra.
51
Jack Kresnak, “Mysteries still linger around boy's short life, tragic death” Lansing State Journal (reprinted from Detroit Free Press)
December 16, 2007.
52
Jack Kresnak, “Suspects and lies,” Detroit Free Press, December 8, 2007.
53
Kresnak, note 42, supra.
54
NCCPR calculates rates of child removal by comparing the number of children take n away over the course of a year, a figure
each state must report to the federal government, to the total number of impoverished children in each state. Some believe it is fair-
er to compare to total child population. We strongly disagree but, for the record, when you run the numbers that way, the results are
the same, Alabama and Illinois do better than Michigan. Entry into care data through 2006 are available here:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/statistics/entryexit2006.htm. Data for 2007, the most recent available,
are not yet online. NCCPR obtained them via a federal Freedom of Information Act request. Population data are from the Census
Bureau.
55
Erik Eckholm, “Once Woeful, Alabama Is Model in Child Welfare,” The New York Times, August 20, 2005.
56
Ivor D. Groves, System of Care Implementation: Performance, Outcomes, and Compliance, March, 1996, Executive Summary,
p.3.
57
Eckholm, note 55, supra.
58
Except as otherwise noted, all information about this case is from the Opinion of the Michigan Supreme Court, In re: JK, Minor,
No. 121410, May 20, 2003. Available online at http://courts.michigan.gov/SUPREMECOURT/Clerk/Opinions-02-03/InreJK-
12apr03.op.pdf
59
Theresa D. Mcclellan, “Adoptive parents distressed, but won’t contest ruling,” Grand Rapids Press, May 23, 2003.
60
Supplemental Brief of respondent, In the Matter of Jacob Kucharski, Supreme Court No.: 121410, April, 2003.
61
In one of the amazing examples of public squabbling for which the Michigan Supreme Court is notorious, the justices threw mud
at each other when they chose someone other than Gardner to become chief judge of the Kent County Probate Court. Justice Eliz-
abeth Weaver accused to majority of basing their decision on the Kucharski case and another in which they’d overruled Gardner.
Justice Weaver made clear she thought Gardner’s decision to terminate Melissa Kucharski’s parental rights had been correct. (Su-
preme Court of Michigan, Order: Appointment of Chief Judge of the Kent County Probate Court, July 25, 2006.)
62
John Agar and Barton Deiters, “Difficult changes to follow adoption reversal,” Grand Rapids Press, May 22, 2003.
63
John Agar, “Overruled judge sees court as ‘place of hope,’” Grand Rapids Press, May 25, 2003.
64
John Agar, “Finally, Jacob is home,” Grand Rapids Press, November 28, 2004.
65
“Adoptive parents to give up kids,” Associated Press, March 16, 2006.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/78

66
John Agar, “Defense witnesses say adoptive parents 'caring and concerned'” Grand Rapids Press, November 29, 2005.
67
Associated Press, note 65, supra.
68
John Agar, “Couple must get treatment to regain kids,” Grand Rapids Press, December 21, 2005.
69
Personal communication, Ben Wolf, Illinois Branch, American Civil Liberties Union. Mr. Wolf is the attorney who brought the suit
that produced the reforms. See also, Matthew Franck, “The Pendulum,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, February 2, 2003.
70
DHS provided NCCPR with county-by-county entry into care data for the first ten months of 2008. We compared these data to
census bureau estimates of the number of children living in poverty in each county.
71
Michigan Advisory Committee on the Overrepresentation of Children of Color in Child Welfare, Equity: Moving Toward Better Out-
comes for All of Michigan’s Children, March 21, 2006, chart, p. 11. Available online at: http://www.michigan.gov/documents/DHS-
Child-Equity-Report_153952_7.pdf
72
All data and quotes for this section are from Muskie School Of Public Service Cutler Institute For Child And Family Policy, Univer-
sity of Maine, and American Bar Association Center for Children and the Law, Michigan Court Improvement Program Reassess-
ment, August, 2005, available online at
http://muskie.usm.maine.edu/Publications/cf/MI_CourtImprovementProgramReassessment.pdf
73
Vivek Sankaran, “Procedural Injustice: How the Practices and Procedures of the Child Welfare System Disempower Parents and
Why it Matters,” The Michigan Child Welfare Law Journal, Fall 2007.
74
CSSP, note 10, supra
75
The report uses this term for judges and “referees” who sometimes are appointed to hear these cases.
76
Children’s Research Center, note 13, supra.
77
The studies or articles citing the studies include: Mary I. Benedict and Susan Zuravin, Factors Associated With Child Maltreatment by
Family Foster Care Providers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, June 30, 1992) charts, pp.28,
30; J William Spencer and Dean D. Kundsen, “Out of Home Maltreatment: An Analysis of Risk in Various Settings for Children,”
Children And Youth Services Review Vol. 14, pp. 485-492, 1992; Peter Pecora, et. al., Improving Family Foster Care: Findings from the
Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study (Seattle: Casey Family Programs, 2005); Leslie Kaufman and Richard Lezin Jones, “Report finds
flaws in inquiries on foster abuse in New Jersey,” The New York Times, May 23, 2003; Affidavit of David S. Bazerman, Esq, Ward v.
Feaver, Case# 98-7137, United States District Court, Southern District of Florida, Fort Lauderdale Division, Dec. 16, 1998, p.4; Children’s
Rights, Inc., “Expert research report finds children still unsafe in Fulton and Dekalb foster care,” Press release, Nov. 5, 2004; Memo-
randum and Order of Judge Joseph G. Howard, L.J. v. Massinga, United States District Court for the District of Maryland, July 27, 1987;
David Fanshel, et. al., Foster Children in a Life Course Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p.90.
78
Goad, note 22, supra.
79
CSSP, note 10, supra.
80
The settlement demands new hiring in two categories: 200 new workers to deal with legal orphans created by the Binsfeld laws
and 40 to license grandparents. The settlement goes on to specify how low caseloads must be for other workers, but does not tell
DHS how to do it.
81
CSSP, note 10, supra.
82
For a discussion of this research and citations, see NCCPR Issue Papers 1 and 11 available online at
http://www.nccpr.org/index_files/page0003.html.
83
Joseph J. Doyle, Jr., “Child Protection and Child Outcomes: Measuring the Effect of Foster Care” American Economic Review: In
Press, 2007. This study is available online at http://www.mit.edu/~jjdoyle/doyle_fosterlt_march07_aer.pdf See also NCCPR’s full analysis
of this study, The Evidence is In, at www.nccpr.org
84
Byron Egeland, et. al., “The impact of foster care on development” Development and Psychopathology, (Vol. 18, 2006, pp. 57–
76).
85
Peter Pecora, et. al., Improving Family Foster Care: Findings from the Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study (Seattle: Casey Fami-
ly Programs, March 14, 2005), available online at http://www.casey.org/NR/rdonlyres/4E1E7C77-7624-4260-A253-
892C5A6CB9E1/300/nw_alumni_study_full_apr2005.pdf See also NCCPR’s analysis of this study, 80 Percent Failure, at
www.nccpr.org
86
Michigan Department of Human Services, Child Protection Law available online at http://www.michigan.gov/documents/DHS-
PUB-0003_167609_7.pdf. The document is a compilation of relevant statutes.
87
Fonger, note 32, supra.
88
“Abuse of children increases in Michigan,” Lansing State Journal, March 29, 2006.
89
Sharon Emery, “Hard times put clamps on abuse prevention,” Jackson Citizen Patriot,
March 26, 2006.
90
Deborah S, Harburger with Ruth Anne White, “Reunifying Families, Cutting Costs: Housing – Child Welfare Partnerships for Permanent
Supportive Housing Child Welfare, Vol. LXXXIII, #5 Sept./Oct. 2004, p.501.
91
Ruth Anne White and Debra Rog, “Introduction,” Child Welfare, note 90, supra, p. 393.
92.
Mary Ann Jones, Parental Lack of Supervision: Nature and Consequences of a Major Child Neglect Problem (Washington: Child
Welfare League of America, 1987), p.2.
93
Troy Anderson, “Ways to care for an ailing foster care system,” Los Angeles Daily News, December 8, 2003.
94
Study cited in Dorothy Roberts, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (New York: Basic Civitas Books: 2002). Many other
studies are cited in the book and summarized in NCCPR Issue Paper #7, Child Welfare and Race, available online at
www.nccpr.org
95
CSSP, note 10, supra.
96
James Beougher, et. al., The Wayne County Experience, Power Point presentation, undated, available online at
http://gpy.ssw.umich.edu/projects/foster/firstConference-WayneCounty.pdf
97.
National Commission on Children, Beyond Rhetoric: A New American Agenda for Children and Families, (Washington, DC: May,
1991), p. 290.
98
Sankaran, note 73, supra. The reason this statistic underestimates the problem has to do with kinship care. Although kinship care
has many advantages over stranger care, children placed in kinship care tend to stay in care longer before reunification, possibly
CYCLE OF FAILURE/79

because agencies tend to see less urgency in reunification when a child is, at least, with a relative. But private agencies handle
very few kinship care cases. So private agencies should be doing better than DHS on reunification, instead of doing worse.
99
Kathleen Wobie, Marylou Behnke et. al., To Have and To Hold: A Descriptive Study of Custody Status Following Prenatal Expo-
sure to Cocaine, paper presented at joint annual meeting of the American Pediatric Society and the Society for Pediatric Research,
May 3, 1998.
100
New York: Anchor Press, 1988.
101
New York: Anchor Books, 1997.
102
Ibid, p. 13.
103
Shannon Brower, Families First of Michigan: A Decade of Keeping Children and Families Safe. (Lansing: Michigan Department
of Human Services:* 2000), p.47.
104.
Carol Berquist, et. al., Evaluation of Michigan's Families First Program (Lansing: University Associates, March, 1993).
105
Betty J. Blythe, Ph.D., Srinika Jayaratne, Ph.D, Michigan Families First Effectiveness Study: A Summary of Findings, Sept. 28,
1999, p.18.
106
Stephanie Lee, et. al., Evidence-Based Programs to Prevent Children from Entering and Remaining In the Child Welfare Sys-
tem: Benefits and Costs for Washington, Washington State Institute for Public Policy July, 2008, available online at
http://www.wsipp.wa.gov/rptfiles/08-07-3901.pdf
107
State of Michigan, Office of the Auditor General, Performance Audit of the Families First of Michigan Program, July, 1998, pp. 2-
4.
108
Schorr, note 101, supra.
109
State of Michigan Department of Human Services, Note 28 supra.
110
Leroy Pelton, For Reasons of Poverty: A Critical Analysis of the Public Child Welfare System in the United States (New York:
Praeger, 1989), Chart, p.6.
111
Testimony of MaryLee Allen, Director, Child Welfare and Mental Health division, Children's Defense Fund, before the House
Ways and Means Committee Human Resources Subcommittee, April 8, 1997.
112
Crabtree, note 22, supra
113
Allen, Note 111, Supra.
114
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Child Maltreatment 2006, Table 2-1, available online at
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm06/table2_1.htm .
115
Michigan Department of Human Services, note 28, supra.
116
CSSP, note 10, supra.
117
“Settlement Agreement,” note 34, supra.
118
Study Findings: Study of National Incidence and Prevalence of Child Abuse and Neglect: 1988 (Washington: U.S. Dept. of Health
and Human Services, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, 1988), Chapter 6, Page 5.
119
The casereading done in connection with the CR lawsuit found that children were removed before petitions were filed with the
court in 25.4 percent of cases. (Children’s Research Center, note 13, supra.).
120
Sankaran, note 73, supra.
121
Michigan Court Improvement Program Reassessment, note 72, supra.
122
Paul Chill, “Burden of Proof Begone: The Pernicious Effect of Emergency Removal in Child Protective Proceedings,” 41, Fam Ct.
Rev. 457 (2003).
123
Sankaran, note 73, supra.
124
Ibid.
125
MCL 712A.19B (3) (c) (ii)
126
MCL 722.638(b)(i) and (ii)
127
Michigan Court Improvement Program Reassessment, note 72, supra.
128
CSSP, note 10, supra.
129
Testimony of Lt. Gov. Connie Binsfeld, Hearing of the Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means,
House of Representatives, June 27, 1996; p.27.
130
“Former Foster Child Tells Panel of Five Lost Years,” The New York Times, April 17, 1988, available online at
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0DC163CF934A25757C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
131
Suter v. Artist M., 112 S. Ct. 1360 (1992).
132
Martin Guggenheim, “The Effects of Recent Trends to Accelerate the Termination of Parental Rights of Children in Foster Care –
An Empirical Analysis in Two States,” Family Law Quarterly, Vol. 29, No.1, Spring 1995.
133
Vivek Sankaran, “But I Didn’t Do Anything Wrong: Revisiting the Rights of Non-Offending Parents in Child Protection Proceed-
ings,” Michigan Bar Journal, March, 2006.
134
Petition for a Writ of Certiorari, Angela Church v. Michigan Department of Human Services, No. 06-6874, undated copy, 2006.
135
Sankaran, note 133, supra.
136
State of Michigan Court of Appeals, Department of Human Services v. Angela Church, unpublished opinion, December 4, 2007.
137
Judge Kenneth L. Tacoma, Lost and Alone on Some Forgotten Highway: ASFA, Binsfeld and the Law of Unintended Conse-
quences, December 2005, available online at http://courts.michigan.gov/scao/services/fcrb/Tacoma.pdf
138
1993, 1994: Michigan Department of Human Services Welfare Reform Data Monitoring, through 2003, no longer available online;
1995 through 2003: Michigan Department of Human Services, Welfare Reform Data Monitoring, Data through March, 2005, availa-
ble online at http://www.michigan.gov/documents/DHS-Welfare-Reform-Jan-Mar-05_127626_7.pdf, 2004 through 2008: Michigan
Department of Human Services, Welfare Reform Data Monitoring, Data through September 2008, available online at
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/dhs/DHS-Welfare-Reform-Oct-08_255360_7.pdf
139
Cari Noga “Changes put onus on biological parents,” Traverse City Record-Eagle, May 15, 2000.
140
Cari Noga, “Old foster care laws put kids in constant transition,” Traverse City Record Eagle, May 14, 2000.
141
Michigan Rate-of-Removal Index, note 40, supra.
142
See for example, http://courts.michigan.gov/supremecourt/Press/MichiganAdoptionDayIndex.htm.
CYCLE OF FAILURE/80

143
Statement of Marcia Robinson Lowry, Executive Director, Children's Rights, Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Human Re-
sources of the House Committee on Ways and Means, November 06, 2003.
144
Mike Wilson, “As parents face conviction, questions remain,” Associated Press, December 5, 2003.
145
Norman Sinclair, et. al., “Toddler’s foster mom charged in her death,” Detroit News, October 3, 2006.
146
Press release, Canton, Mi., department of public safety, February 27, 2008, available online at
http://www.cantonpublicsafety.org/news_events/Press_Releases_2008/fostermothersentenced022708.html
147
George Hunter, “We were always scared,” Detroit News, January 10, 2007.
148
Edward L. Cardenas, “Jury: Mom guilty of abuse,” Detroit News, June 7, 2007.
149
“Son of man accused of sexually assaulting foster daughters also charged,” Grand Rapids Press, January 11, 2001.
150
Because child welfare systems almost never ask questions to which they don’t want to know the answers, there is very little re-
search on adoption disruption. But even studies that predate the current push at the state and federal levels for adoption-at-all costs
suggest that 10 to 25 percent of so-called “forever families” don’t turn out to be forever after all – the adoptive parents change their
minds. (National Adoption Information Clearinghouse Disruption and Dissolution, available online
at http://www.adopting.tk/disruptions.htm.)
151
Robin Erb, “Parents of kids in foster care seek changes,” Detroit Free Press, November 18, 2008.
152
Personal communication from Janice Christophel, secretary to Justice Corrigan.
153
The author of this report was present at the Task Force meeting. A video of the meeting is available at
http://www.publicpolicy.com/videos/. Click on Adoption Work Group. Justice Corrigan’s comments are about 26 minutes in.
154
Tacoma, note 137, supra.
155
Ibid.
156
Christophel, note 152, supra.
157
Robin Erb, “Getting Kids Out,” Detroit Free Press, November 30, 2008.
158
C. Usher, D. Gibbs, and J. Wildfire, Evaluation of Family to Family, (Research Triangle Park, NC: Research Triangle Institute /
Chapel Hill, NC: Jordan Institute for Families, School Of Social Work, University Of North Carolina, December, 1998), available on-
line at http://www.unc.edu/~lynnu/f2feval.htm
159
In addition to creating a separate division exclusively for child welfare (another CR obsession) the decree specifies that anyone
working in that division “…shall not hold responsibility for any of DHS’s other functions, such as cash assistance, Medicaid, and
adult services.”
160
Center for Law and Social Policy, A Vision for Eliminating Poverty and Family Violence: Transforming Child Welfare and TANF in
El Paso County, Colorado, available online at
http://m15080.kaivo.com/LegalDev/CLASP/DMS/Documents/1043875845.58/El_Paso_report.pdf
161
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Foster Care FY2002 - FY2006 Entries, Exits, and Numbers of Children In Care
on the Last Day of Each Federal Fiscal Year, available online at
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/statistics/entryexit2006.htm. Data for 2001 are available at
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/afcars/statistics/entryexit2005.htm
162
Ibid.
163
Personal communication, James Beougher, director, Office of Child and Family Services, Maine Department of Health and Hu-
man Services.
164
Family to Family, Semi-Annual Outcome Report, Wayne County, Michigan, December, 2007.
165
A summary of the research, with full citations, is available at www.nccpr.org/reports/residdntialtreatment.doc These data will be
discussed in more detail in NCCPR’s next report on Michigan child welfare.
166
Methodist Children’s Home Society brochure, available online at
http://www.mchsmi.com/04/doc_lib/General%20brochure%20Web.pdf
167
Gongwer News Service, “State child policy challenged before committee,” April 26, 2006; David Eggert, “Private homes criticize
state’s approach to foster care,” Associated Press, April 26, 2006.
168
CSSP, note 10, supra.
169
For details on Brace and his orphan trains and excerpts from his writing and studies of the results of his efforts, See Richard
Wexler, Wounded Innocents: The Real Victims of the War Against Child Abuse (Prometheus Books: 1990, 1995), Chapter 2.
170
CSSP, note 10.
171
“Are kids better off with family?” Michigan Republican Party Blog, April 27, 2006.
172
The language reads: “The department shall not implement a geographically based assignment system for foster care unless de-
termined to be in the best interests of the foster children.”
173
The statute is (42 U.S.C. 675[5][A]) available online at
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode42/usc_sec_42_00000675----000-.html
174
Children’s Research Center, note 13, supra.
175
Settlement Agreement, note 34, supra.
176
The Urban Institute estimates that states spent at least $3.8 billion in federal funds reserved exclusively for foster care, and at least
another $1.25 billion on funds reserved exclusively for adoption. States spent $549 million from child welfare funding streams that can be
used for prevention and family preservation. But these funds can be used for many other purposes as well. Based on the Urban Institute
data, NCCPR estimates that no more than $400 million of that $549 million – and probably far less – actually went to prevention, family
preservation or family reunification. (Cynthia Andrews Scarcella et. al, The Cost of Protecting Vulnerable Children IV, (Washington DC,
The Urban Institute) December 20, 2004, available online at http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411115_VulnerableChildrenIV.pdf ).
177
Crabtree, note 22, supra. The foster care reimbursement rate is linked to the reimbursement rate for Medicaid. The economic
stimulus bill before Congress as this report is written would increase this rate by 4.9 percent.
178
Class Action Complaint, Dwayne B. v. Granholm, August 8, 2006, available online at http://www.childrensrights.org/wp-
content/uploads/2008/05/2006-08-08_michigan_complaint.pdf
179
For details, see NCCPR’s Florida Rate-of-Removal Index, available online at http://www.nccpr.org/reports/floridaror03062008.pdf
180
Florida Department of Health, State Child Abuse Death Review Team, Annual Reports, available online at
http://www.flcadr.org/reports.html
CYCLE OF FAILURE/81

181
Florida Rate-of-Removal Index, note 179, supra.
182
Personal communication, Alan Abramowitz, December 20, 2008.
183
Michigan Advisory Committee… Note 71, supra.
184
Stacey Range, “State may see fewer kids in foster care,” Lansing State Journal, April 11, 2006.
185
Rochelle Riley, “Lawsuit complicates state's foster care improvements,” Detroit Free Press, August 11, 2006.
186
Chaliman, note 11, supra.
187
CWLA, note 6, supra.
188
Jack Kresnak, “Attorneys say they'll stop representing children,” Detroit Free Press, January 5, 2004.
189
Heath Foster, “Relying on good advice can reunite troubled families,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 12, 2003, p.B1.
190
Special Child Welfare Advisory Panel for New York City, Advisory Report on Frontline Practice (March 9, 2000) p.48.
191
University of Michigan Law School Child Advocacy Law Clinic, Detroit Center for Family Advocacy: An Innovative Model to Re-
duce the Number of Children in Foster Care (Undated); and personal communication, Prof. Vivek Sankaran, University of Michigan
Law School.
192
CSSP, note 10, supra.
193
Institute for Judicial Administration and American Bar Association, Juvenile Justice Standards and Goals Project, Standards Re-
lating to Abuse and Neglect (Cambridge MA: Ballinger Publishing, 1981).
194
CSSP, note 10, supra.
195
William Adams, Neil Barone and Patrick Tooman, “The Dilemma of Anonymous Reporting in Child Protective Services,” Child
Welfare 61, no. 1, January, 1982, p.12.
196
Ibid.
197
CSSP, note 10, supra.
198
Arizona Revised statutes, 8-807, available online at http://www.azleg.state.az.us/ars/8/00807.htm
199
Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud, Albert J. Solnit, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child, (New York: The Free Press, 1973), p.53.

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